Why Charging Gaps Matter in Wrist-Worn Alcohol Monitoring

A wearable can collect many readings over a week while still missing the precise window a researcher wants to study. In a seven-day field feasibility study, Merrill and colleagues asked 20 participants who reported heavy drinking to wear a wrist-worn Skyn biosensor, report alcohol use, and describe their experience.

What happened away from the lab

Many missing intervals were under five minutes. The investigators also encountered gaps associated with charging and forgetting to put the device back on. Participants had been asked to charge during typical non-drinking hours. That instruction itself can shape when data are available, so coverage across the entire week can conceal a gap during an important event.

How to summarize coverage

Report the start and end of a gap and, when known, its cause. Compare the gap with the period used to score drinking, then show how the classification changes if those hours are treated as unknown. A zero on the sensor and a period without an observation are different entries in a dataset. This small feasibility study supports that distinction for the wrist device and protocol it used.

Source

Merrill et al., Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022