VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Fujitsu Collaborate to Develop Novel Solutions for Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

PALO ALTO & SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At the Quantified Self 2012 conference, Fujitsu Laboratories of America (FLA)announced a collaboration with Dr. Steve Woodward, Ph.D., a researcher at VA Palo Alto Health Care System (VAPAHCS), in which FLA monitoring technology is being used to monitor the rehabilitation of Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during driving. FLA believes this will assist VA’s research objective of understanding the triggers for PTSD and discovering remedies that will enable Veterans to return to normal life.

“This improved technology has enabled us to dramatically reduce the in-car IT footprint during our research project”

Given their traumatic experiences, especially with improvised explosive devices, many Veterans returning home from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have higher accident rates and difficulty adjusting to normal driving. As part of this project, VAPAHCS instrumented a car and its Veteran driver. This made it possible to gather multiple streams of physical and physiological data. FLA’s remote monitoring technology was used to time synchronize the data coming from the various sensors and to store, analyze and visualize the data which could then be used to provide biofeedback and interventions in real time.

“This improved technology has enabled us to dramatically reduce the in-car IT footprint during our research project,” said Dr. Woodward, the Principal Investigator of the study at VAPAHCS. “This has streamlined our data collection and analysis and enabled us to focus on novel treatment solutions.”

As part of the research project multiple sensors and applications collect data from the car including GPS, speed, brake and steering movements. For the Veteran, EKG, heart rate, and respiration are collected. These data streams are then analyzed to understand the causes for onset of PTSD symptoms. It is also being used to help design effective treatments to alleviate the condition.

“Our collaboration with VAPAHCS has yielded promising results to help our returning Veterans,” said Yasunori Kimura, President and CEO of Fujitsu Laboratories of America. “We are looking forward to continued collaboration with VAPAHCS. It is our hope that by contributing our unique technology we will help find solutions to this and other critical issues facing Veterans.”

About Fujitsu
Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Over 170,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$54 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012. For more information, please see: http://www.fujitsu.com.

About Fujitsu Laboratories of America
Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. (Japan), focusing on research on Internet, interconnect technologies, software development and solutions for several industry verticals. By conducting research in an open environment, it contributes to the global research community and the IT industry. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. For more information, please see: www.fla.fujitsu.com.

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