i-SAD: An Edge-Intelligent IoT-Based Wearable for Substance Abuse Detection

Overindulgence of harmful substances such as drugs or alcohol, called substance abuse, can directly affect a person's health and their day-to-day activities. The younger population become more vulnerable to such use of psychoactive substances due to lack of awareness of the long-term hazardous effects these substances can have on their health. Additionally, these individuals tend to develop severe mental disorders as they grow older. With the boom of Internet of Things (IoT), the use of wearable sensors such as smartwatches and smartphones has tremendously increased. These wearables help in monitoring a person's physiological signal and keep them informed of one's health. In this research, we propose an edge-intelligent IoT-based wearable that can assist in substance-abuse detection by monitoring their physiological signals on daily basis. The proposed system helps in monitoring the substance abuse and craving of the individual and help the healthcare provider to start an early intervention as required. The proposed system is validated using a custom-built wearable, i-SAD, which was developed as a dedicated substance abuse wearable using commercially available off-the-shelf components. The proposed wearable design was validated using medical quality wearable and yielded a correlation of 0.89 for accelerometer values and 0.92 for average heart rate values.

I. Introduction

A pattern of repeated overuse of any substance such as alcohol or drug, that can directly affect a person’s day-today activities and health can be termed as substance abuse. Repeated use of these substances can lead to a dependence syndrome which is a cluster of physiological, behavioral, and cognitive phenomena and make it extremely difficult in controlling the use of it. As per the reports of World Health Organization, in 2016, about 27 million people worldwide suffered from overuse of opioids, which are psychoactive substances derived from the opium poppy [1]. Though there are effective treatments for opioid dependence yet less than 10% of the affected population receives treatment. On another report from WHO, it was stated that substance abuse was more common in individuals who didn’t have education after their high school. The reason for substance abuse can be a result of anxiety or stress in the person [2].