Two articles on important development in the war against opoid abuse - Carnegie Mellon students develop watch-like wearable developed to detect overdoses
https://techxplore.com/news/2018-12-students-band-device-opioid-overdose.html
Students develop band device for opioid overdose alerts
by Nancy Cohen , Tech Xplore
December 31, 2018 weblog
Students develop band device for opioid overdose alerts
Anyone familiar with statistics and headlines about opioid addiction was not shocked to see that in the United States by late 2017 opioid addiction was declared a national public health emergency.
Now a team of Carnegie Mellon software engineering students have built a wristband that can detect an opiate overdose and send out alerts and a message so that contacts can intervene. The students are calling it the HopeBand and, in the context of an opiate overdose when time for intervention can impact survival, it is a tool of hope.
This was actually a project for the Institute for Software Research's professional master's program in embedded software engineering (MSIT-ESE). A pharmaceutical consulting firm sponsored the project, Pinney Associates.
HopeBand is described as a wrist-mounted "pulse oximetry" device. Yu-Sam Huang, Carnegie Mellon, said you just pair the band with your smartphone so if it picks up an overdose, it will alert emergency contacts.
Jeremy Hsu in IEEE Spectrum discussed how it works to pick up the signs of distress. Hsu said that pulse oximetry sensors "can monitor the oxygen levels in blood by shining light from LEDs through the skin and detecting changes in light absorption. If oxygen levels drop low enough to signal possible overdose, the device monitors the situation for 10 seconds before sounding the alarm." …
"When paired to a mobile phone via Bluetooth, the sensor takes numerous readings on an ongoing basis to establish a baseline reading. If the user's blood oxygen level drops for more 30 seconds, the device switches an LED on the display from green to red. The device also cues the paired mobile phone—via an app the team also developed—to send out a message with the user's GPS coordinates to his or her emergency contacts." …
Nonetheless, the life-saving factor would not be just naloxone nearby the victim but having somebody nearby who can administer it. "Having naloxone on hand doesn't matter if you overdose and there is nobody nearby to administer it," said Michael Hufford, CEO of Harm Reduction Therapeutics. …
In the Institute for Software Research Carnegie Mellon article, Pinney senior data manager Steve Pype, said, "Initially, we were thinking this might be a proof of concept. But here we are: The project is almost finished and they're refining the prototype." …
"The team plans to start offering it for free via needle exchange programs," said PCMag. "They eventually aim to sell it for between $16 and $20 and add features that can help wearers fight their addiction."
[Moar at website]
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https://www.isri.cmu.edu/news/2018/2018113-hashtag.html
ESE Team Wins National Honors for Wearable Device That Detect Opioid Overdose
By Josh Quicksall Email
November 13, 2018
Opioid drug overdoses kills thousands of Americans each year. A team of software engineering students has developed a wearable device that could help address these unprecedented rates of overdose deaths.
As a capstone project for the Institute for Software Research's professional master's program in embedded software engineering (MSIT-ESE), four students worked with their sponsor, Pinney Associates, to build a prototype wristband that can detect overdose in the wearer.
The challenge the client presented to the team was to produce a low-cost wearable device that could accurately detect an opioid overdose and send out an alert — helping rescuers respond in time to administer naloxone, a life-saving opioid antagonist that can reverse the overdose.
The device delighted Pinney Associates, a pharmaceutical consulting firm that sponsored the work. And it was also clever enough that the team beat out 97 percent of all submissions to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Opioid Challenge competition, ultimately placing third in the competition finals at the Health 2.0 Conference held in September in Santa Clara, Calif. …
Using pulse oximetry, the device they developed monitors the amount of oxygen in the user's blood by measuring light reflected back from the skin to a sensor. When paired to a mobile phone via Bluetooth, the sensor takes numerous readings on an ongoing basis to establish a baseline reading. If the user's blood oxygen level drops for more 30 seconds, the device switches an LED on the display from green to red. The device also cues the paired mobile phone — via an app the team also developed — to send out a message with the user's GPS coordinates to his or her emergency contacts.
[Moar at website]