Improving Health and Well-Being with personalized, Pervasive Technology

This Grand Challenge research project focuses on improving the health, wellbeing, and independence of individuals with reduced capacity due to illness or advanced age. Toward this aim, we will develop and deploy novel, personalized technology that integrates conversational voice assistants with wearable sensors and smart-textile clothing technology to provide real time, in home, unobtrusive sensing and on-body stimulation solutions (e.g., pressure, heat, etc.). This project brings together an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students in computer science, apparel design, wearable technology, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, nursing, and pharmacy to develop a proof-of-concept transformative framework for individually tailored detection and management of mental stress and anxiety in everyday life—a major risk factor for conditions that greatly impact public health including heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity, and addiction. The framework we will develop and pilot-test over the two years of the project will integrate three major components: 1) natural language interaction with the user via a conversational voice assistant; 2) physiological signal sensing of activity, heart rate, body temperature, and electrical conductivity of skin; and 3) garment-based delivery of heat and compression interventions to reduce stress and anxiety detected via voice and wearable sensors. The results of this work will provide feasibility data and integrated technology to expand our efforts with community partners to a broad range of populations and therapeutic areas.