In his latest blog post for the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, science journalist and person with Parkinson's Jon Palfreman introduces us to Personalized Parkinson Project. This Netherlands study aims to understand the variability of this disease to develop and recommend treatments based on an individual's profile.

"My dream is to end up with a decision support system, a black box, that sits on the clinician's desk. And now he can say, 'based on your kinetic profile, your CSF result, your stool analysis ... the best evidence suggests that people like you do well when they get this particular treatment," principal investigator Bastiaan Bloem, MD, PhD -- professor of Neurological Movement Disorders at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands and founder of ParkinsonNet, a network of Parkinson's care providers -- tells Palfreman.

Read the full post to learn more, including how the Personalized Parkinson Project will collect and use data from smartwatches.

The study is modeled after the MJFF-led Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative and will, like PPMI, make its data accessible to the broad research community.

"We know that findings from any study gain value if they can be replicated and found consistent across different populations," says MJFF CEO Todd Sherer, PhD. "Having two studies modeled in a similar fashion dramatically accelerates the speed we can validate and actionize insights."

PPMI is recruiting people with a genetic link to Parkinson's disease. Take a short survey to learn if you may be eligible.