SOUTH CAROLINA: Researcher receives $1.5M NIH grant to use smartwatch tracking technology to ensure accurate medicine-taking process
SC INBRE Bioinformatics Core Director Dr. Homay Valafar is researching and developing methods of extracting and interpreting data from sensors which can be incorporated into smartwatches to monitor and identify medication adherence remotely and unobtrusively. “NIH recently solicited participation of researchers to collect data in areas where they believe further studies are needed. One area is what we are doing now: human activity recognition by collecting data that can simply and unobtrusively monitor people's activities,” said Valafar whose research is supported by a $1.5M grant from the NIH.
The smartwatches could identify certain gestures and monitor the process of taking medicine, from picking up a bottle and dispensing the medicine into an individual’s hands to taking the medicine and closing the bottle. According to Valafar, the process usually lasts around 10 seconds for one medication, and artificial intelligence mechanisms in the smartwatch can be trained to monitor the gestures.
“That's where we come in, since health care providers want the technology. The hardware manufacturers can produce it, but there is no connection of getting the right information from the devices to process, use, manage and send it to the health care provider properly. We are currently working on helping close that gap.” said Dr. Homayoun Valafar, UofSC Department of Computer Science and Engineering.