Home Sensors Detect Opioid Withdrawal Signs as Patients Sleep
A recent pilot study conducted by researchers at Washington State University showed that a set of noninvasive home sensors could provide information about restlessness and sleep problems—2 frequent issues for those recovering from opioid use disorder.
Findings from the study, published in the journal Pain Management Nursing, demonstrated that the home sensors matched readings from other sleep monitoring methods about 89% of the time.
“One day when people go home from addiction treatment, we could send them to a smart home sensor environment, so we can know remotely if they're struggling to sleep and getting up and down a lot,” study lead author Marian Wilson, PhD, a WSU nursing professor, said in a news release. “We know that poor sleep is a trigger for substance use and could lead to unintended overdose.”
The study was conducted at WSU’s Sleep and Performance Center and included 16 hours of data over 2 nights for 4 patients in methadone treatment programs. Movement sensors were placed on a wall, overhead, and on a door. Data collected by the sensors was compared to information collected by observers via video and polysomnography—a common sleep study method that uses wires attached to the patient and monitoring equipment to track oxygen saturation and leg movement.
The home sensors produced findings largely consistent with the other monitoring tools. The next step for research of the sensors would be to move testing from the university’s controlled lab setting to the home environments of patients who have been discharged from inpatient treatment or are beginning an outpatient medication-assisted treatment program, the researchers said.
“This tells us that maybe in the future, we don't need to have the person come into the sleep lab to be observed,” Dr Wilson said in the news release. “The home sensors would be a very unobtrusive way to monitor somebody with no cameras, no videos, just the sensors that tell us about their movements.”
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