Oftentimes, the function set for our typical fitness-focused wearables feels a bit empty. push notifications on your wrist? OK, fine. Counting your steps? Sure, why not. however exactly how useful are those abilities anyway? Well, what if wearables might be utilized for a more dignified function like assisting people in healing from compound utilize condition (SUD)? That’s what the researchers at the university of Massachusetts medical institution aimed to discover out.
In their paper, they utilized a wrist-worn wearable to determine locomotion, heart rate, skin temperature, as well as electrodermal activity of 38 SUD patients during their daily lives. They wished to find periods of stress as well as craving, as these parameters are possible triggers of compound use. Furthermore, they had patients self-report times during the day when they felt stressed or had cravings, as well as utilized those reports to calibrate their model.
They tried a number of classification designs such as decision trees, discriminant analysis, logistic regression, as well as others, however discovered the most success utilizing support vector machines though they failed to discuss why they believed that was the case. In the end, they discovered that they might find stress vs. non-stress with an accuracy of 81.3% as well as craving vs. no-craving with an accuracy of 82.1%. Not amazing accuracy, however provided the dire requirement for medical advancements for SUD, it’s something to keep an eye on. Interestingly enough, they discovered that locomotion data alone had an accuracy of approximately 75% when it came to indicating stress as well as cravings.
Much ado has been made about the insufficient accuracy of wearable gadgets for medical diagnoses, especially of those that determine activity as well as heart rate. perhaps their design would perform better, being trained on real-time measurements of cortisol, a more precise physiological determine of stress.
Finally, what truly stood out to us about this research study was exactly how willing patients were to utilize a wearable in their treatment strategy. It’s unfortunate that society frequently has a extremely unfavorable understanding of SUD patients, leading to fewer treatment choices for patients. however hopefully, with technological advancements such as this, we’re one step better to a more equitable future of healthcare.