Developing a Wearable Sensor-Based Digital Biomarker of Opioid Dependence

Repeated opioid exposure leads to a variety of physiologic adaptations that develop at different rates and may foreshadow risk of opioid-use disorder (OUD), including dependence and withdrawal. Digital pharmacovigilance strategies that use noninvasive sensors to identify physiologic adaptations to opioid use represent a novel strategy to facilitate safer opioid prescribing. This study aims to identify wearable sensor-derived features associated with opioid dependence by comparing opioid-naïve individuals to chronic opioid users with acute pain and developing a machine-learning model to distinguish between the 2 groups.

Using a longitudinal observational study design, continuous physiologic data were collected on participants with acute pain receiving opioid analgesia. Monitoring continued throughout hospitalization and for up to 7 days posthospital discharge. Opioid administration data were obtained from electronic health record (EHR) and participant self-report. Participants were classified as belonging to 1 of 3 categories based on opioid use history: naïve, occasional, or chronic use. Thirty features were derived from sensor data, and an additional 9 features were derived from participant demographic and treatment characteristics. Physiologic feature behavior immediately postopioid use was compared among naïve and chronic participants, and subsequently features were used to generate machine learning models which were validated using cross-validation and holdout data.

Forty-one participants with a combined total of 169 opioid administrations were ultimately included in the final analysis. Four interpretable decision tree-based machine learning models with 14 sensor-based and 5 clinical features were developed to predict class membership on the level of a given observation (dose) and on the participant level. Ranges for model metrics on the participant level were as follows: accuracy 70% to 90%, sensitivity 67% to 100%, and specificity 67% to 100%.

Wearable sensor-derived digital biomarkers can be used to predict opioid use status (naïve versus chronic) and the differentiating features may be detecting opioid dependence. Future work should be aimed at further delineating the phenomenon identified in these models (including opioid dependence and/or withdrawal) and at identifying transition states where an individual changes from 1 profile to another with repetitive opioid exposure.