An official website of the United States government
In military operations, real-time monitoring of soldiers’ health is essential for ensuring mission success and safeguarding personnel, yet such systems face challenges related to accuracy, security, and resource efficiency. This research addresses the critical need for secure, real-time monitoring of soldier vitals in the field, where operational security and performance are paramount. The paper focuses on implementing a machine-learning-based system capable of predicting the health states of soldiers using vitals such as heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RESP), pulse, and oxygen saturation SpO2. A comprehensive pipeline was developed, including data preprocessing, the addition of noise, and model evaluation, to identify the best-performing machine learning algorithm. The system was tested through simulations to ensure real-time inference on real-life data, with reliable and accurate predictions demonstrated in dynamic environments. The gradient boosting model was selected due to its high accuracy, robustness to noise, and ability to handle complex feature interactions efficiently. Additionally, a lightweight cryptographic security system with a 16-byte key was integrated to protect sensitive health and location data during transmission. The results validate the feasibility of deploying such a system in resource-constrained field conditions while maintaining data confidentiality and operational security.
more »
« less
Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars
Abstract With the United States military stretched thin in the “global war on terror,” military officials have embraced psychopharmaceuticals in the effort to enable more troops to remain “mission-capable.” Within the intimate conditions in which deployed military personnel work and live, soldiers learn to read for signs of psychopharmaceutical use by others, and consequently, may become accountable to those on medication in new ways. On convoys and in the barracks, up in the observation post and out in the motor pool, the presence and perceived volatility of psychopharmaceuticals can enlist non-medical military personnel into the surveillance and monitoring of medicated peers, in sites far beyond the clinic. Drawing on fieldwork with Army personnel and veterans, this article explores collective and relational aspects of psychopharmaceutical use among soldiers deployed post-9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan. I theorize this social landscape as a form of “medication by proxy,” both to play on the fluidity of the locus of medication administration and effects within the military corporate body, and to emphasize the material and spatial ways that proximity to psychopharmaceuticals pulls soldiers into relationships of care, concern and risk management. Cases presented here reveal a devolution and dispersal of biomedical psychiatric power that complicates mainstream narratives of mental health stigma in the US military.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1851014
- PAR ID:
- 10205677
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
- Volume:
- 44
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0165-005X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 565 to 585
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Officially referred to as “unit watch” and more colloquially as “buddy watch,” the use of continuous direct observation and restrictive measures enforced by peers is a widely used, though controversial, tool in the US Army's suicide prevention efforts. Borrowing from the Army concept and system of the battle buddy, the partnering of soldiers who assist each other in and out of combat, the unit watch is simultaneously conceived as a means of “family” concern, treatment, surveillance, restraint, and even mentorship. Drawing on fieldwork among soldiers and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I explore what the practice of unit watch reveals about institutional and psychiatric interventions as a form of constraint‐as‐care in settings of global US military power. I emphasize the bodily and affective dimensions of the unit watch and the forms of sociality, including coerced obligation and forced intimacy, that the unit watch can produce. Soldiers’ accounts of being watched and watching others under the sign of unauthorized violence also highlight the tense and ambivalent nature of managing suicide in material, institutional, and geopolitical settings organized for the production of violence.more » « less
-
With the establishment of wide-ranging post-9/11 state and federal higher education tuition and living benefits, military service member and veteran enrollment in American colleges and universities has increased exponentially over the last decade. Research examining the difficult transition these students make as they move from the military to the university typically does not position these institutions as separate cultural spheres, however. Using freelisting interview methods (n=54), this qualitative study explores cultural differences between the military and university and how student military service members and veterans believe these differences influence their transitions into college. Results show that students perceive an absence of camaraderie in university life in particular, and that the missing family atmosphere, trust, and deeper relationships of their military experience are an important influence on their university experience.more » « less
-
Medication adherence is a major problem in the healthcare industry: it has a major impact on an individual’s health and is a major expense on the healthcare system. We note that much of human activity involves using our hands, often in conjunction with objects. Camera-based wearables for tracking human activities have sparked a lot of attention in the past few years. These technologies have the potential to track human behavior anytime, any place. This paper proposes a paradigm for medication adherence employing innovative wrist-worn camera technology. We discuss how the device was built, various experiments to demonstrate feasibility and how the device could be deployed to detect the micro-activities involved in pill taking so as to ensure medication adherence.more » « less
-
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurological progressive movement disorder, affecting more than 10 million people globally. PD demands a longitudinal assessment of symptoms to monitor the disease progression and manage the treatments. Existing assessment methods require patients with PD (PwPD) to visit a clinic every 3–6 months to perform movement assessments conducted by trained clinicians. However, periodic visits pose barriers as PwPDs have limited mobility, and healthcare cost increases. Hence, there is a strong demand for using telemedicine technologies for assessing PwPDs in remote settings. In this work, we present an in-home telemedicine kit, named iTex (intelligent Textile), which is a patient-centered design to carry out accessible tele-assessments of movement symptoms in people with PD. iTex is composed of a pair of smart textile gloves connected to a customized embedded tablet. iTex gloves are integrated with flex sensors on the fingers and inertial measurement unit (IMU) and have an onboard microcontroller unit with IoT (Internet of Things) capabilities including data storage and wireless communication. The gloves acquire the sensor data wirelessly to monitor various hand movements such as finger tapping, hand opening and closing, and other movement tasks. The gloves are connected to a customized tablet computer acting as an IoT device, configured to host a wireless access point, and host an MQTT broker and a time-series database server. The tablet also employs a patient-centered interface to guide PwPDs through the movement exam protocol. The system was deployed in four PwPDs who used iTex at home independently for a week. They performed the test independently before and after medication intake. Later, we performed data analysis of the in-home study and created a feature set. The study findings reported that the iTex gloves were capable to collect movement-related data and distinguish between pre-medication and post-medication cases in a majority of the participants. The IoT infrastructure demonstrated robust performance in home settings and offered minimum barriers for the assessment exams and the data communication with a remote server. In the post-study survey, all four participants expressed that the system was easy to use and poses a minimum barrier to performing the test independently. The present findings indicate that the iTex glove system has the potential for periodic and objective assessment of PD motor symptoms in remote settings.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-020-09673-7
