Smartphones can tell when you're drunk by analyzing your walk

Date:
August 18, 2020
Source:
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs
Summary:
Your smartphone can tell when you've had too much to drink by
detecting changes in the way you walk, according to a new study.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Your smartphone can tell when you've had too much to drink by detecting
changes in the way you walk, according to a new study published in the
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.


========================================================================== Having real-time information about alcohol intoxication could be important
for helping people reduce alcohol consumption, preventing drinking and
driving or alerting a sponsor for someone in treatment, according to
lead researcher Brian Suffoletto, M.D., who was with the University
of Pittsburgh School of Medicine when the research was conducted and
is now with Stanford University School of Medicine's Department of
Emergency Medicine.

"We have powerful sensors we carry around with us wherever we go,"
Suffoletto says. "We need to learn how to use them to best serve public health." But for Suffoletto, this research is much more than academic. "I
lost a close friend to a drinking and driving crash in college," he
says. "And as an emergency physician, I have taken care of scores of
adults with injuries related to acute alcohol intoxication. Because of
this, I have dedicated the past 10 years to testing digital interventions
to prevent deaths and injury related to excessive alcohol consumption."
For the study, Suffoletto and colleagues recruited 22 adults ages 21
to 43.

Volunteers came to a lab and received a mixed drink with enough vodka
to produce a breath alcohol concentration of .20 percent. They had one
hour to finish the alcohol.

Then hourly for seven hours, participants had their breath alcohol concentration analyzed and performed a walking task. For this task,
researchers placed a smartphone on each participant's lower back, secured
with an elastic belt. Participants walked a straight line for 10 steps,
turned around, and walked back 10 steps.



==========================================================================
The smartphones measured acceleration and mediolateral (side to side),
vertical (up and down) and anteroposterior (forward and backward)
movements while the participants walked.

About 90 percent of the time, the researchers were able to use changes
in gait to identify when participants' breath alcohol concentration
exceeded .08 percent, the legal limit for driving in the United States.

"This controlled lab study shows that our phones can be useful to
identify 'signatures' of functional impairments related to alcohol,"
Suffoletto says.

Although placing the smartphone on the lower back does not reflect how
people carry their cell phones in real life, the research group plans
to conduct additional research while people carry phones in their hands
and in their pockets.

And although it was a small investigation, the researchers write that
this is a "proof-of-concept study" that "provides a foundation for
future research on using smartphones to remotely detect alcohol-related impairments." "In 5 years, I would like to imagine a world in which if
people go out with friends and drink at risky levels," Suffoletto says,
"they get an alert at the first sign of impairment and are sent strategies
to help them stop drinking and protect them from high-risk events like
driving, interpersonal violence and unprotected sexual encounters."
Going forward, Suffoletto and his colleagues plan to not only build
on this research detecting real-world signatures of alcohol-related
impairment but also identify the best communication and behavioral
strategies to influence and support individuals during high-risk periods
such as intoxication.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Journal_of_Studies_on_Alcohol_and_Drugs. Original written by Paul
Candon. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Brian Suffoletto, Pritika Dasgupta, Ray Uymatiao, James Huber, Kate
Flickinger, Ervin Sejdic. A Preliminary Study Using Smartphone
Accelerometers to Sense Gait Impairments Due to Alcohol
Intoxication.

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2020; 81 (4): 505 DOI:
10.15288/ jsad.2020.81.505 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200818094030.htm

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