# An Innovative Wearable Sensor For The Early Detection and Prevention Of Fatal Opioid Overdose

> **NIH NIH R21** · WEILL MEDICAL COLL OF CORNELL UNIV · 2020 · $241,916

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT
 The opioid epidemic in the United States necessitates the development of novel interventions that are critical
to preventing opioid fatalities. To help combat this crisis, our goal is to develop a respiratory sensing device to
transmit an early alert of an impending respiratory failure to the victim and to designated family members, friends,
and/or the Police Emergency Unit enabling life-saving intervention. To have an impact on saving lives, the
sensing device must be convenient and comfortable so that the user will wear it all times. It must also to be
accurate and robust - false alarms will discourage long-term use, and, conversely, missed diagnoses has serious
consequences
 The device described in this proposal will apply an innovative near-field coherent sensing (NCS) method to
measure the cardiopulmonary system without direct skin contact, enabling comfortable long-term wearing. It will
have a dual-mode operation that allows for high user mobility indoors and outdoors in the active mode, and
reliable in-home protection in the passive mode which allows usage even if the user has forgotten to recharge
the battery. The research proposal aims to optimize the device hardware and software, in terms of identification
of changes in respiration that signal impending respiratory arrest. This low-cost innovative technology will also
provide robust diagnostic accuracy for early detection and prevention of fatal opioid overdoses.
 The proposal is composed of three specific aims: 1) Development of a wearable device with a sensing tag
for respiratory monitoring with network connectivity; 2) Benchmarking early respiratory signatures of the
proposed tag by airflow pressure transducers and respiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP) during
polysomnography; 3) Construction of engineering phantom models for variation analysis and design guidance.
The Cornell Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Weill Cornell Medical College research team will use
their expertise in their respective tasks, and will work together on comparative testing, data analyses and
revisions based on feedback information. The engineering team will validate the tag designs on a phantom
model and on a limited number of users. The main goal is to establish the design procedures and parametrical
analysis for eventual use in the community to combat the opioid crisis. At the Sleep Center at Weill Cornell, gold-
standard techniques will be employed to monitor respiration with calibrated polysomnography to benchmark the
proposed sensor. The main goal is to establish physiological evidence for early respiratory symptoms of
impending opioid overdose in preparation for eventual full-scale clinical studies.
 The successful development of the proposed device will allow for accurate monitoring of symptoms of
respiratory depression to enable early intervention to prevent opioid overdose.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9999882
- **Project number:** 1R21DA049566-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** WEILL MEDICAL COLL OF CORNELL UNIV
- **Principal Investigator:** JULIANNE L IMPERATO-MCGINLEY
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $241,916
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-05-01 → 2022-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9999882

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9999882, An Innovative Wearable Sensor For The Early Detection and Prevention Of Fatal Opioid Overdose (1R21DA049566-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9999882. Licensed CC0.

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