New Parkinson's diagnostic tool

Video Title: Breakthrough Parkinson’s diagnostic tool

DESCRIPTION: This is a text based video depicting various shots of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. It also shows footage of a new RMIT diagnostic tool, which has users drawing spirals in order to detect the disease in its early stages. Over the footage is text describing various elements of the research.  

AUDIO: Sad ambient piano music plays.

TEXT ON SCREEN: About 10 million people around the world live with Parkinson’s disease.

In Australia, 32 people are diagnosed every day.

But because there are no lab tests for PD,

a confirmed diagnosis can come too late.

By the time someone develops physical symptoms,

like tremors or rigidity,

many nerve cells in their brains have already suffered irreversible damage.

Now a breakthrough early diagnostic tool

developed by RMIT researchers

may change all that.

Their custom software can diagnose PD when there are no obvious physical symptoms.

It’s got a 93% accuracy rate.

And all you need to make it work is

a pen, paper and a digital drawing tablet.

The software records how someone draws a spiral and analyses the data in real time.

PD affects how people write and draw

but efforts to translate that into a diagnostic tool have failed –

until now.

AUDIO: Ambient Music Fades

VISUAL: RMIT Logo appears

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