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History

INDIGO is the new commercial name (launched on June, 1st, 2005) of Parkwalker.

PARKWALKER has been developed from the results of an earlier EU R&D project called “PARREHA” (IST-1999-12552, 2000-2003).

The INDIGO user requirements were written by EUROPARK, a campaign group of people with PD based in Germany. The user requirements were developed into prototypes by the technical partners and then tested by people with PD in the Bad Nauheim Parkinson’s clinic and the "Schneckenhaus" PD community housing project, also in Germany.

The size and clinical parameters of the population who display kinesia paradoxa was investigated, along with the effect of using INDIGO. Clinical test were performed with the support of:

• Bad Nauheim PD clinic, Germany: Europe’s largest PD clinic which has actively supported the reserach from 2000 to the present day.
• "Clinica Addominale all'EUR" in Rome, Italy, under the clinical supervision of Dr. Stocchi of the European Association for Medical Research.
• Mr. Stathis Triantafillou Psychologist of Rehabilitative Technology, who organised local clinical trials at the Institute of Neurology of the State University hospital of Aeginition in Athens, under the clinical direction of Dr Evdokimidis.

The results suggest that INDIGO is viable, since it proved effective over 11% of people with PD in intermediate stages. Assuming we have representative data for PWP in Hoehn-Yahr stages 2, 3 and 4 then 70% of the PD population (EPDA UK Primary Care Survey, 2000) and the PD population represents 0.2% of the general population. Taking Germany, given a population of 80M and a PD population of 160K then the German potential INDIGO user base is approximately 12,000. Correspondingly the EU market (population 350M) is approximately 135,000.