Symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) can be controlled well, but treatment often requires expert judgment. Telemedicine and sensor-based assessments can allow physicians to better observe the evolvement of symptoms over time, in particular with motor fluctuations. In addition, they potentially allow less frequent visits to the expert’s office and facilitate care in rural areas. A variety of systems with different strengths and shortcomings has been investigated in recent years. We designed a multimodal telehealth intervention (TelePark) to mitigate the shortcomings of individual systems and assessed the feasibility of our approach in 12 patients with PD over 12 weeks in preparation for a larger randomized controlled trial. TelePark uses video visits, a smartphone app, a camera system, and wearable sensors. Structured training included setting up the equipment in patients’ homes and group-based online training. Usability was assessed by questionnaires and semi-standardized telephone interviews. Overall, 11 out of 12 patients completed the trial (5 female, 6 male). Mean age was 65 years, mean disease duration 7 years, mean MoCA score 27. Adherence was stable throughout the study and 79% for a short questionnaire administered every second day, 62% for medication confirmation, and 33% for an electronic Hauser diary. Quality of life did not change in the course of the study, and a larger cohort will be required to determine the effect on motor symptoms. Interviews with trial participants identified motivations to use such systems and areas for improvements. These insights can be helpful in designing similar trials.

Background: The medical care of critically ill children requires special expertise in pediatric emergency and intensive care medicine. In Germany, this expertise is mainly available in specialized centers at maximum-care hospitals due to the small number of cases of critically ill children. Telemedical care networks, such as the Pediatric-Tele-Intensive-Care Network Saxony, offer a solution for networking these centers with regional hospitals providing basic or standard care. However, the evaluation of these networks represents a major challenge, especially because it involves a heterogeneous target group of patients with various diseases. This article reports on the evaluation design development process for such a network, under equal participation of all relevant stakeholders, and presents the resulting evaluation design. Methods: The methods used were a literature review, two workshops, and a survey of all relevant stakeholders (representatives of 17 partner clinics, 4 external experts in pediatric intensive care, and 2 patient representatives). Results: The evaluation design contained proposals for a care objective, outcomes, and the corresponding databases (project database, clinic database, and survey database) to investigate these. Conclusions: Our study can offer other researchers and stakeholders a methodological approach and template for their evaluation design. It is the first published, consented evaluation design for a telemedical care network in pediatric intensive care. When developing and realizing an evaluation design for (tele)medical interventions, including the perspectives of relevant stakeholders, from the outset, it is essential to achieve a high level of commitment to the implementation of the evaluation.