Max Little: A test for Parkinson's with a phone call

Parkinson's disease affects 6.3 million people worldwide, causing weakness and tremors, but there's no objective way to detect it early on. Yet. Applied mathematician and TED Fellow Max Little is testing a simple, cheap tool that in trials is able to detect Parkinson's with 99 percent accuracy -- in a 30-second phone call.

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• Category

  Science & Technology

[H1TMANactual]

My Uncle has Parkinson's. It's sad watching him, knowing the man he used to be.

[neurel111]

CANADA: 1-647-931-5776

[Allie Shepley]

Wow...... what a huge advancement for this growing disease!!!

[James McCollum]

I don't know if the public can necessarily access the results. Also, I think that for screening tests, it's not that important to minimize false positives. I think one wants a highly sensitive test so that the patient can be referred to services. Of course, it's best that a test is sensitive and specific, but I think as a screener, the false positive rate matters less.

[schatz87]

This is a question of Type I and type II errors, i.e. a false positive error and a false negative error. Both are obviously needed in the end. A type I error leads one to conclude e.g. that a patient has a disease being tested for when really the patient does not have it, while a type II error would be a blood test failing to detect the disease.

Presumably he refers to the tests ability to accurately detect the disease at 99%, meaning the type I error is 1%. Still impressive in my view.

[Ayn Marx]

Any test open to all the population must be extremely accurate---if we are to trust the 6.3M figure, that means that a little more than 1/1000 the world's human population have this disease. If that is the true rate generally, that means that the test would have to be much more accurate than 10%.

At a 1 percent false positive rate, you would get roughly 10 false positives for every accurate diagnosis. Bayes matters.

[casmatt1]

@GriefSeeker that was a voice box. Its the thing you and me use to speak with :)

[GriefSeeker]

What the fuck was that pink thing shown?

the ear?

[TuringTroll]

6,3 million poeple means almost 0,1% of ALL people. When you are 80 there is a 1,5% chance of having Parkinson. In comparison, "only" 33 million people have HIV so why should we waste so much money for research? When does a disease get worthy of our attention and efforts? When it affects someone you personally know? I think it's definitively worth it.

[I Ekberg]

You could even make an app.

Parkinson tracker