Client
Newcastle University
Technology
Artificial Intelligence
MAKE CARE CONNECTED
Building an AI chatbot to help people manage Parkinson's disease
For sufferers of chronic illnesses, understanding what's going on with their bodies and being able to accurately track and monitor their medication intake is crucial to managing their condition.
We worked with Prof. Edward Meinert, Professor of Digital Health and Clinical Artificial Intelligence at Newcastle University – then through its spinout Gnosis Health – to help develop and deploy its MAXine app that helps people with Parkinson’s and their loved ones understand what’s going on with their disease.
MAKE CARE CONNECTED
Building an AI chatbot to help people manage Parkinson's disease
- Before
- During
- After
MAKE CARE CONNECTED
Taking a Parkinson’s app from vision to reality
At Newcastle University, Professor Edward Meinert is part of a team with a specific mission – developing and deploying tools and technologies to help patients and their loved ones better understand what's going on with their disease, and support clinicians in caring for them.
Edward and his team set out to create an app, MAXine, that would bring together data collected from hospital and patient's own devices to provide a clearer picture on things like sleep patterns, medicine intake and diet for people with Parkinsons. That's all information that could be tied back to patient symptoms to help inform care.
At the heart of the new app is a powerful AI chatbot system that pulls together relevant information and shares it with patients and carers in real-time.
Edward's team had the vision and the code. The challenge was to productionise it – to take it from a concept to an app that could be rolled out to people with Parkinson’s. That's where we came in at KPMG.
MAKE APPDEV FLOW
A new approach to application development
The first step for our team was to conduct a full code assessment of the MAXine app. We identified the good and bad parts in the existing code, and where it needed a complete overhaul.
Working alongside Edward and his team, we transformed the software delivery approach by integrating AI-powered coding assistants and autonomous agents into established engineering practices. Rather than replacing traditional delivery methods, these capabilities augmented the joint client and KPMG team, helping us accelerate development cycles, increase productivity, and focus more effort on delivering business outcomes.
Using tools such as Anthropic's Claude, we created a new, scalable development model that has since been adopted by the University for additional clinical application projects. The approach provides a repeatable blueprint for AI-enabled software engineering that we can tailor and apply for other clients seeking faster, more effective delivery.
MAKE THE DIFFERENCE
Into clinical trial with 1,000 patients
Gnosis Health launched the MAXine app in early 2026 as part of an initial clinical study. The app brings together information from wearables, clinical information from doctors, and input from carers and patients. That provides rich data on how medication, sleep patterns and diet, for example, are impacting symptoms. And that means patients, their loved ones and medical professionals are better informed.
What began as a research application is being used by over 1,000 patients across England on a day-to-day basis, helping them better manage and understand what's going on with their Parkinson's disease.
Following the initial study, Gnosis plans to open the MAXine app to the broader marketplace in late 2026.
How we're making the difference
Newcastle University and Gnosis Health now have a fully functional application – with a powerful AI chatbot at its core – that’s redefining the way in which patients and clinicians can monitor and manage Parkinson's disease.
KPMG provided the design engineering expertise and incorporated innovative new approaches to software engineering to take a research application and transform it into something ready for the market.
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