Creating Community and Convenience With Prime PD: Konstantin Karmazin, MD

WATCH TIME: 6 minutes

“[Patients] say, ‘I like the community, I like feeling empowered, I like having ownership over this condition to a certain degree’…especially with boxing, there’s a good analogy of ‘fighting back.’”

Prime PD, a digital wellness studio for patients with Parkinson disease (PD), offers a variety of fitness classes, including yoga, Rock Steady Boxing, and high-intensity interval training, among others. The program, which launched in January 2022, has received positive feedback from physicians as well as patients, according to Konstantin Karmazin, MD, clinical neurologist and chief medical officer of Prime PD.

The clear divide, Karmazin said, exists between patients who prefer live classes that offer a social component versus those who otherwise want to be able to access classes on-demand as they would on YouTube or another streaming platform. For those who prefer the live aspect, it allows for structure in a daily schedule and creates a social support system through interaction and engagement with coaches. On the flip side, those who prefer to access the platform solely to workout, which tends to be younger patients, have prompted the team at Prime PD to begin developing a hybrid system where needs are evaluated and a curriculum of on-demand, prerecorded videos can be ‘prescribed.’ Those at Prime PD welcome feedback, with Karmazin noting that patients do not need a prescription to sign up or a physician referral, nor do they need a formal PD diagnosis.