The cell phone’s GPS and accelerometer sensors can be used to determine our level of drug use with astonishing precision.
The study, presented by researchers at Rutgers University’s Institute of Health, Healthcare Policy, and Research on Aging, shows that the use of an algorithm that combined sensors that tracked GPS location and movements with time-of-day data day and day of the week, it offered a 90% accuracy rate for determining whether or not someone was high.
“We could detect when a person might be experiencing cannabis intoxication and perform a brief intervention when and where it might have the greatest impact in reducing cannabis-related harm,” says Tammy Chung, director of the Center for Behavioral Health Institute of the population at work published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
The researchers collected daily data from volunteers in Pittsburgh between the ages of 18 and 25 who said they smoked marijuana at least twice a week.
Typically, an accelerometer measures different movements, such as leaning or swaying, and changes the orientation of the phone’s screen from portrait to landscape accordingly.
Existing marijuana detection measures, such as blood and urine tests, present logistical problems and would require too much time to use as an intervention, so the study is presented as an analysis of the feasibility of using data from smartphone sensors to identify episodes of “cannabis intoxication”, which are remarkably high, in a non-laboratory setting.
Referencia: Sang Won Bae, Tammy Chung, Rahul Islam, Brian Suffoletto, Jiameng Du, Serim Jang, Yuuki Nishiyama, Raghu Mulukutla, Anind Dey,
Mobile phone sensor-based detection of subjective cannabis intoxication in young adults: A feasibility study in real-world settings, Drug and Alcohol Dependence,
Volume 228, 2021, 108972, ISSN 0376-8716,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2021.108972.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376871621004671)
