[UW News] A team of UW researchers have developed a cellphone app that uses sonar to monitor someone’s breathing rate and sense when an opioid overdose has occurred. The app, called Second Chance, accurately detects overdose-related symptoms about 90 percent of the time and can track someone’s breathing from up to 3 feet away. In addition to watching breathing, the app also monitors how people move.
"The idea is that people can use the app during opioid use so that if they overdose, the phone can potentially connect them to a friend or emergency services to provide naloxone,” said co-corresponding author Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “Here we show that we have created an algorithm for a smartphone that is capable of detecting overdoses by monitoring how someone’s breathing changes before and after opioid use.”
The research to develop and test the app was funded by an ADAI Small Grant to Dr. Jacob Sunshine and by the National Science Foundation. The team published its results in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Read the UW News article by Sarah McQuate. and related stories in The New York Times, CNBC, Science Friday, New Atlas and Science News.
