Cocaine addiction is a serious public health problem for which better treatments are needed. Advances in wearable sensors and smart phones are dramatically improving our ability to collect more holistic, real-time data on individuals' health. A project recently funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health proposes to apply these technologies to our understanding of cocaine addiction to develop more effective and personalized treatment interventions.
Robert Malison, MD, professor of psychiatry, director of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit at the Connecticut Mental Health Center, and chief of the Cocaine Research Unit at Yale, is the principal investigator on the grant. Dr. Malison will collaborate with Deepak Ganesan, PhD, associate professor of computer science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Together, the investigators propose to identify digital “signatures” based on low-level physiological sensor data that can detect cocaine use and intoxication.
Due to the complexity and individuality of biological responses to cocaine use, more modern methods of monitoring the treatment of cocaine addiction are required – methods that more holistically, accurately, and dynamically assess the addicted individual in real-time.
The investigators hope this research will help to create a system of secure personal digital and web-based tools that will both facilitate the identification of more effective treatments for and, ultimately, allow a more personalized medical approach to the diagnosis and treatment of cocaine addiction.
This work is based at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit of the Connecticut Mental Health Center and is supported in part by the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.