Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Patrick O’Donovan TD, has today announced funding of €26 million for 40 research projects.
Funded under the Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland Frontiers for the Future Programme, the projects address key areas such as environmental sustainability, new EV battery technologies, breast cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and currently untreatable childhood neurological disorders.
Prof Alan Smeaton and Professor Tomás Ward of Insight at DCU have been awarded €492,516.50 for their project: Using collar-worn accelerometers on assistance dogs for signalling the early detection of the onset of epileptic seizures in humans (ADSA)
Epilepsy is a widespread neurological disorder which affects over 50 million people worldwide, including more than 45,000 in Ireland. The unpredictable nature and the sudden onset of seizures can have an impact on people’s quality of life. We know that assistance dogs can be trained to recognise the volatile organic compounds, namely the scents, that people who experience seizures secrete through their skin, just prior to a seizure occurring. Assistance dogs can also be trained to perform a signalling behaviour such as movements like spinning when they detect this scent and these can be automatically detected from a wearable sensor, in real time.
In this project when a seizure is imminent and the scent is secreted by the subject, it is detected by a trained assistance dog who alerts via a spinning motion which in turn is picked up by the wearable sensor. When the onset of a seizure can be detected in this way, the subject can be placed into a safe environment or position so that self-injury as a result of the seizure can be minimised.
This project is multi-disciplinary and is a collaboration between Profs Alan Smeaton and Tomás Ward at the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics at DCU, Irish Dogs for the Disabled, a charity based in Cork which breeds and trains assistance dogs, Beaumont Hospital and Epilepsy Ireland.
