mHealth Research Daily, with Tim Bredrup
The effects of stress on health have been a main focus area for public health research, but progress has been limited due to a lack of wearable sensors that can be worn effectively in the field.
Researchers at Ohio State University recently analyzed wireless, wearable sensors that are a part of a system developed by AutoSense. The system’s sensors effectively collect and processes cardiovascular, respiratory, and thermoregularity measurements that can inform about the general stress state of test subjects in their natural environment.
The system utilizes key features which overcome many challenges past efforts have presented. These include a six sensor design in small form factor that enables unobtrusive wearability, an ANT radio integrated low-powered design providing an impressive ten plus days of continuous monitoring that accurately performs even in crowded environments, and sensor measurements that are robust to several sources of errors and confounds inherent in field usage.
AutoSense was used in a 20+ subject real-life scientific study on stress in both the lab and field, which resulted in the first model of stress that provides 90% accuracy. The information and diagnostics that systems like these can provide could very well be key elements in various health care advancements going forward.
Authors: Emre Ertin, Nathan Stohs, Santosh Kumar, Andrew Raij, Mustafa al’Absi, Siddharth Shah
Institution: Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
Original Abstract: www.acm.org, from Proceedings of the 9th ACM SenSys Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Nov 2011
