Wear this: $1.5M grant supports mHealth jewelry

The National Science Foundation’s Computer Systems Research program pumped $1.5 million into a project to develop computational jewelry to support mHealth applications.

The grant funds researchers from S.C.-based Clemson University and N.H.-based Dartmouth College for the Amulet project to develop the engineering tools and lay the scientific foundation for secure, wearable technology. The researchers also are developing a general framework for body-area pervasive computing, centered on health-monitoring and health-management applications.

The research will examine whether computational jewelry offers advantages in availability, reliability, security, privacy and usability, and how such technology could work in spite of severely constrained power resources of wearable jewelry.

“Our vision is that computational jewelry, in a form like a bracelet or pendant, will provide the properties essential for successful body-area mHealth networks. These devices coordinate the activity of the body-area network and provide a discreet means for communicating with their wearer,” said Jacon Sorber, assistant professor in the computer science division at Clemson's School of Computing.