How Rune Labs Uses Data to Improve Prospects for Parkinson's Patients

<p>Harry's guest this week, Brian Pepin, says there haven’t really been any advances in the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease in a decade. The standard treatment is still the standard treatment—meaning various drugs to replace dopamine in the brain, since the loss of neurons that produce dopamine is one of the hallmarks of the disease.</p><p>But there has been one important change during that decade. Thanks to new technologies, ranging from wearables like the Apple Watch to sophisticated deep brain implants from companies like Medtronic, we’re now able to gather a lot more data about what’s happening in the daily lives of patients with Parkinson’s, and how the disease is affecting their brain function and their physical movement. Which means there’s now the potential to make much smarter and more timely decisions about how to dose the drugs patients are taking, or whether they should think about joining a clinical trials.</p><p>Gathering and analyzing that information and feeding it back to patients and their doctors in a user-friendly form is the mission of Rune Labs, where Pepin is CEO. He says we’re on the edge of a new era of “precision neurology,” where data gives doctors the power to predict the course of a disease and muster a meaningful clinical response. And he wants Rune Labs to be at the leading edge of that change. </p><p>For a full transcript of this episode, please visit our episode page at <a href="http://www.glorikian.com/podcast">http://www.glorikian.com/podcast </a></p><p><strong>Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! </strong>Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:</p><p><strong>1. </strong>Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. </p><p><strong>2. </strong>Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.</p><p><strong>3. </strong>Scroll down to find t