Cue Band
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A Wearable Device for Cueing for the management of drooling, and monitoring of symptoms, in people with Parkinson’s
IRAS ID
305798
Contact name
Richard Walker
Contact email
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN59284050
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 31 days
Research summary
Drooling is a common symptom of Parkinson’s, experienced in up to 70% of people with Parkinson’s (PwP). Drooling can be a major problem in PwP due to decreased automatic swallowing, particularly when people are multi-tasking and concentrating on other thing’s such as watching television. When automatic swallows don’t occur, saliva pools in the mouth leading to drooling which can be very embarrassing and restricts the social life of PwP. Current treatments decrease the production of saliva, which need to be repeated on a 3-monthly basis. Such treatments are problematic as saliva is essential for good oral health. Impaired reduction of loss of saliva through drooling exposes individuals to a range of negative health and psychosocial issues. NICE therefore recommend non-invasive treatment options such as behavioural cueing methods. A wearable wrist device using haptic cueing was not only an effective treatment method to increase swallowing but also a socially acceptable solution for PwP. However, the decide had limited functionality and was not suitable for all day use for example, participants were required to wear it for 1 hour per day and had to manually start/stop the cueing as needed; this made it less desirable as an everyday solution. Further work is needed in a larger sample size and to understand the real-world behaviours and usage of the intervention to understand the longer-term effects. We will deploy an application (App) on a smartwatch designed to work with a smartphone. The smartwatch is a discrete and comfortable wearing device that can be worn on the wrist – referred to as Cue Band. We will recruit 3000 PwP to wear the device throughout our 6-week evaluation. Participants will be asked to wear the device 24/7 during this time, giving us a greater understanding of the effectiveness and acceptability of the technology within real-world use.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/NE/0008
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jan 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion