Scientist Pushes for Grassroots Campaign for FDA Laws on Wearable Devices

NEWTON, Mass. - Nov. 18, 2015 - PRLog -- With wearable technology more prevalent than ever, many in the industry are raising red flags to the lack of studies and federal reviewal of such a delicate product. Today products like Fitbit can track health, fitness, and even sleep–while many new products are now gaining access into aspects of user emotional status through breathing patterns. heart rate, and skin conductance. This information is seen as sensitive by one former MIT Media Lab tech who has founded a new company dedicated to the research and development of the social impacts of biosensing wearables.

Jocelyn Riseberg Scheirer is CEO and founder of Bionolux Labs; a company that specializes in social  and wearables that track mood and mental health. However, she advocates designating them as medical devices to be used in tandem with qualified professionals. “These devices are not toys or mental fitness trackers, they have deeper consequences than that.”, she says. “Physiological stress in the way that these devices detect is not the same thing as ‘stress’ in the colloquial manner that laypeople think it is. The lack of a common language is distressing”.

Scheirer was one of the first women in the history of wearable computing. Starting in the early days of “Affective Computing”, she watched the field grow from a bunch of graduate students into a commercial market. With her history in the field, Scheirer sees the risk in using consumers as the guinea pigs of these products. “These devices have been tested to see if they are physically harmful. What they haven’t been tested for is long term emotional consequences or social factors. We know that knowing your stress or the stress of others changes the narrative of conversations. More research needs to be done.”

She is not even discussing some of the nefarious uses that others imagine regarding privacy. In a recent CNN article (http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/04/tech/innovation/this-new-te...), Kieron Monks highlights the dangers of the new technology that can detect mood."I think variations are already being used in places like airports and we would never know,” he says. "I can't imagine a system to take value readings of my mind for a remote company being used for good. It's a dark path.”

Schierer’s goal with Bionolux Labs is to bring social and political awareness to the critical juncture where the ensuing wave of wearable devices is taken seriously enough to accelerate the FDA approval process or increase discussion of privacy laws.

“Are we going to release these as a worldwide social experiment, or are we going to be a little intelligent about how we do this? We can only do this experiment, one time,” comments Scheirer. She adds, “People have been so concerned with the ability to get them out there. Nobody has tested the social effects.”

While this is a long-term problem and laws are put into place slowly, Scheirer is hoping her grassroots campaign will help grow this conversation and bring awareness to the need for governmental oversight for wearable devices. To learn more about her campaign, please visit: http://www.bionolux.com.

About the Founder:

Jocelyn Riseberg Scheirer is CEO and founder of Bionolux Labs, a company specializing in social wearable technology and the advocacy of wearables for mental health. An innovator in wearables for almost 20 years, Jocelyn began her career in research as a technician in the Endocrine Pathology lab at Tufts Medical School. She went on to earn her M.A. from Brandeis in the Developmental and Social Psychology of emotions. As a Ph.D. student at MIT Media Lab’s Affective Computing Group, she continued this work exploring the physiology of emotional response. There, she developed her first wearable devices.

In 2009, she helped found and served as Director of Operations for Affectiva, a company dedicated to digitizing emotion with the largest database of facial expressions ever collected, and an initial biosensor product called the Q Sensor. A social scientist with medical lab training as well as a former Media Lab Ph.D. student., Jocelyn brings a unique and highly sought after perspective to the wearables market. Jocelyn has authored and co-authored numerous articles and papers on affective computing and sensing technology and presented at national industry-related conferences. She has served as a research analyst at Harvard University and as a consultant to different departments at MIT.

For media inquiries regarding Bionolux Labs, individuals are encouraged to contact Founder and CEO, Jocelyn Scheirer directly at 617-515-6921 or via email at jocelyn@bionolux.com. To learn more about the company, please visit www.bionolux.com.