“We have powerful sensors that we carry around with us everywhere,” comments lead author Dr Brian Suffoletto. “We must learn to better exploit this data to better serve public health.” For the author, who confides to have recently lost a close friend in a car accident due to alcohol and who works as an emergency doctor, the research is far from academic, the researcher has spent the last 10 years testing digital applications to prevent deaths and injuries related to alcohol excess.
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Gait changes typical of alcoholism
To test this new development, the team recruited 22 adults between the ages of 21 and 43 who were given a drink with enough vodka to produce a breath alcohol concentration of 0.20%. Participants had one hour to finish their drink and then had to take a walk test and a breath test every hour. During this test, each participant wore a smartphone attached to the lower back with an elastic belt. Participants were asked to take 10 steps forward in a straight line, then 10 steps back. Smartphones evaluated acceleration and lateral, vertical and anteroposterior movements.
In 90% of cases, certain changes in approach make it possible to identify “alcoholism”
as defined by an alcohol concentration in the breath> 0.08. Thus, this laboratory-controlled test provides proof of the concept of a smartphone-identifiable signature of functional impairments linked to alcohol.
It certainly remains to adapt the application so that it works even when the smartphone is not worn on the lower back!
“I imagine a world in which if people go out with friends and receive an alert at the first sign of impairment in order to be better protected against certain risky behaviors including driving under the influence of alcohol, violence interpersonal and unprotected sex ”.
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