Dr. Edward Boyer, professor of emergency medicine at UMass Medical School.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

By Lori Valigra

UMass Medical School researchers in Worcester used smartphone programming, artificial intelligence, biosensors, and wireless networks to develop a device to help treat drug abusers.

The device is designed to detect physiological stressors associated with drug cravings and respond with user-tailored behavioral interventions that prevent substance use, according to the researchers, who published preliminary data about the multi-media device, called iHeal, online recently in the Journal of Medical Toxicology. The device is still in experimental stages and needs some improvements in technical issues, such as privacy and design, before it’s ready for prime time, according to the researchers.

According to the study’s authors, many behavioral interventions used to treat patients are ineffective outside of the controlled clinical settings where they are taught. The failures stem from several factors, including a patient’s inability to recognize biological changes that indicate increased risk of relapse and an inability to change their behaviors to reduce health risk.

Dr. Edward Boyer, professor of emergency medicine at UMass Medical School and lead author of the study, worked with colleagues at UMMS and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to design a mobile device using enabling technologies to make substance abuse behavioral interventions more effective outside the clinic or office environments. The iHeal combines sensors to measure physiological changes and detect trigger points for risky health behaviors, such as substance use, with smartphone software tailored to respond with patient-specific interventions.

The researchers asked individuals with a history of substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder to wear an iHeal sensor band around their wrist to measures the electrical activity of the skin, body motion, skin temperature, and heart rate, which all can serve as stress indicators. The band wirelessly transmits information to a smartphone, where software applications monitor and process the user’s physiological data. When the software detects an increased stress level, it asks the user to input additional information about their perceived level of stress, drug cravings, and current activities. That information is then used to identify, in real-time, drug cravings and deliver personalized, multimedia drug prevention interventions at the moment of greatest physiological need, according to the researchers.

Boyer and his teams examined the iHeal system architecture, as well as preliminary feedback from initial users, to identify key attributes and assess the device’s viability. They found that there are a number of technical issues related to data security and the need for a more robust and less stigmatizing version before the device could be worn in public.

Read the original:
UMass Medical uses smart phones to treat drug abuse