Your smartphone can probably tell when you've had too much to drink.
A new study finds the phones are capable of detecting inebriation based on changes to a person's walk.
Having real-time information about alcohol intoxication could be important for helping people reduce alcohol consumption, preventing drinking and driving or alerting a sponsor for someone in treatment, according to lead researcher Brian Suffoletto, M.D., who was with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine when the research was conducted and is now with Stanford University School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine.
About 90 percent of the time, researchers were able to measure changes in gait of test subjects who consumed enough alcohol to consider them intoxicated.
“This controlled lab study shows that our phones can be useful to identify ‘signatures’ of functional impairments related to alcohol,” Suffoletto says.
He wants to use the research effectively detect real-world signatures of alcohol-related impairment.
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