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The majority of current smart health applications are deployed on a smartphone paired with a smartwatch. The phone is used as the computation platform or the gateway for connecting to the cloud while the watch is used mainly as the data sensing device. In the case of fall detection applications for older adults, this kind of setup is not very practical since it requires users to always keep their phones in proximity while doing the daily chores. When a person falls, in a moment of panic, it might be difficult to locate the phone in order to interact with the Fall Detection App for the purpose of indicating whether they are fine or need help. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of running a real-time personalized deep-learning-based fall detection system on a smartwatch device using a collaborative edge-cloud framework. In particular, we present the software architecture we used for the collaborative framework, demonstrate how we automate the fall detection pipeline, design an appropriate UI on the small screen of the watch, and implement strategies for the continuous data collection and automation of the personalization process with the limited computational and storage resources of a smartwatch. We also present the usability of such a system with nine real-world older adult participants. 

A significant portion of the veteran population suffers from PTSD, a mental illness that is often accompanied by social anxiety disorder. Student veterans are especially vulnerable as they struggle to adapt to a new, less structured college lifestyle. In order to assist psychologists and social workers in the treatment of social anxiety disorder we use machine learning to analyze transcribed interview text and apply topic modelling to highlight common stress factors for student veterans. The results detailed in this paper also have broader impacts in fields such as pedagogy and public health. 

This paper explores the personalization of smartwatch-based fall detection models trained using a combination of deep neural networks with ensemble techniques. Deep neural networks face practical challenges when used for fall detection, which in general tend to have limited training samples and imbalanced datasets. Moreover, many motions generated by a wrist-worn watch can be mistaken for a fall. Obtaining a large amount of real-world labeled fall data is impossible as fall is a rare event. However, it is easy to collect a large number of non-fall data samples from users. In this paper, we aim to mitigate the scarcity of training data in fall detection by first training a generic deep learning ensemble model, optimized for high recall, and then enhancing the precision of the model, by collecting personalized false positive samples from individual users, via feedback from the SmartFall App. We performed real-world experiments with five volunteers and concluded that a personalized fall detection model significantly outperforms generic fall detection models, especially in terms of precision. We further validated the performance of personalization by using a new metric for evaluating the accuracy of the model via normalizing false positive rates with regard to the number of spikes of acceleration over time.