Project: Assessing and Extending the Utility of Wearable Device Data for Service Animal Efficacy for U.S. Military Veterans with PTSD

Overview

Recent estimates suggest that more than 10 percent of recently returning veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to some degree or another. Service animals for the support of veterans with PTSD have been utilized, but there is a large gap in our knowledge of the efficacy of these animals, despite anecdotal evidence that these animals improve the lives of veterans in a meaningful way. This lack of "hard evidence" has made it difficult to develop funding sources, especially federal ones, for the funding of service animals for veterans with PTSD, with or without associate traumatic brain injury (TBI).

In analyzing this problem, a local solution existed that would allow the existing 1Data platform to collate information from human and dog wearables, from Garmin and FitBark, respectively.

By comparing data from these devices, synced to specific times, along with journal information from veterans, we can compare frequencies of interventions from animals with reports of efficacy and verify efficacy.

One key problem, for example, lies in the ability of animals to successfully intervene in interrupted sleep from nightmares/night terrors, where a successful effort by the animal might not be noted in journals but should be detected by a combination of information from the dog and human wearables However, this has not been examined. The 1Data framework should allow for the relatively easy integration and examination of this data.

Long-term, the goal of this project is to extend the utility of service animals by using data from their wearables to develop applications that monitor the dog activity and note cases where intervention and health checks for veterans would be indicated.