Your smartphone could know when you have a marijuana overdose

By Nina Zdinjak

In addition to the myriad of uses a smartphone is useful for, another one could hit the market in the near future: Evidence of cannabis poisoning in young adults.

A new study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence evaluated the feasibility of using smartphone sensor data such as GPS to identify episodes of cannabis poisoning, which include euphoria, impairment of motor skills, temporal and spatial distortion or, in more severe cases, extreme fear, panic attacks, hallucinations and / or chest pain.

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It is widely believed that cannabis overuse has been linked to slow response times, which can affect work and school performance, or impair the ability to drive. Current cannabis detection techniques measure blood, urine, or saliva, but have limitations that experts and law enforcement agencies generally agree on, since unlike alcohol, the extent of impairment cannot be determined by a single measurement.

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This latest study, conducted by the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, complements the research by examining daily data collected from young adults in real-life situations who confirmed marijuana use at least twice a week.

The perfect combination – time functions plus smartphone sensor data

By analyzing time characteristics (tracking the time of day and day of the week) in combination with smartphone sensor data, the researchers achieved 90% accuracy in identifying cannabis poisoning. The time characteristics alone only had an accuracy of 60% in identifying self-reports of cannabis poisoning.

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The two most valuable phone sensor features for this detection were travel patterns from GPS data (at times when they felt high) and motion data from the accelerometer. The accelerometer tracks various movements including shaking, swinging, tilting, rotating, and changing the orientation of the app in use.

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“Using the sensors in a person’s phone, we may be able to identify when a person may be suffering from cannabis poisoning and conduct brief intervention when and where it could have the greatest impact on reducing cannabis damage,” said Tammy, Corresponding Author Chung , Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Population Behavioral Health at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research.

The “higher” goal

The idea behind this project is to create a detection model that enables “just-in-time intervention” to reduce possible damage. It was concluded that this model has the potential to achieve this goal.

Other study authors include faculties at Stevens Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Tokyo, Japan, and University of Washington, Seattle.

This article originally appeared on Benzinga and was republished with permission.