We had a conversation with Alcohol Academy’s director, Mr. James Morris over Skype, asking him about his opinions of the potential impacts the AlcoPatch might have on our society. Mr Morris mentioned “brief intervention” where doctors or health professionals would try to spot and motivate people to change behaviour patterns which might become harmful to them. Perhaps an alcohol awareness patch like ours might be useful to health professionals who are trying to make people more conscious of how much alcohol they consume?Mr James Morris said:“Maybe the AlcoPatch is something that they could give, or build it into a project to see whether people who are receiving brief intervention would like to receive the AlcoPatch and found it useful thereafter.”
Mr. Morris then explained the “multidimensional aspects” to alcohol consumption and how an awareness tool would have limited impact in reducing alcoholism. He suggested, rather than talking about how our patch can reduce alcohol consumption, it would be more appropriate to discuss how our patch could help make people more aware of how much they are drinking. Furthermore, our patch doesn’t measure intoxication as of such, it measures how much ethanol is in the sweat and thus how much is in the blood; but as to how drunk someone is, this has much more factors involved in its understanding. He explained: “[Your] Tolerance to alcohol, [is affected by] your size, your weight, how tall you are, how much you’ve eaten, any medical conditions”.
Addiction Dependency Solutions (ADS) believe the ethanol biosensor would be beneficial for the public. However, members of the public who have intentional addiction would choose not to use it. It is for this reason that they believe the ethanol biosensor will be more successful in raising awareness of alcohol consumption rather than it being a tool to preventing it. ADS thought our ethanol biosensor would be effective in early intervention, where efforts are made to prevent addiction before it takes hold. Such as including the ethanol biosensor in health kits whilst making them available in bars and clubs. This confers with what Mr Morris from Alcohol Acadmy said.
ADS told us that in their opinion the cell free mechanism would be cheaper to produce as it doesn’t use any living cells, however this would mean that a colour gradient would exist and therefore allow people to turn the patch into a sort-of game. It would also have a much longer shelf life than the inducible gene-switch alternative as there would be no living cells to expire. However, inducible gene-switch would not indicate ethanol presence in gradients, it would just appear as distinct colours which would eliminate the possibility of competition amongst some users. The downside would be that the patch would have live cells inside which would need to be kept at a fairly constant (probably) cold temperature to avoid the cells perishing.
ADS suggested that we use colours which people would identify certain emotions with, for example the ‘traffic light’ colours, where ‘red’ would indicate severe intoxication and ‘green’ to indicate light/no intoxication (see our mechanism 2 page). Alternatively, using a gradient colour which measures the amount of alcohol consumed would be a good way for people to measure their intake of alcohol and set targets to consume less over time [insert pilot experiment photos as example].
After explaining our project, the Alcoholics Anonymous members believed that our patch had potential with those thinking to cut down on alcohol and those who might need to be made aware of how intoxicated they are, but they said that they postulated that most people would not be sensible enough to use it. Specifically, they addressed the limitations of our patch towards alcoholics; they mentioned how alcoholism is in the mind, it is a psychological condition where one actively tries to reduce their awareness - ultimately the opposite requirements of our patch to be used. They believed that alcoholics don’t keep track of how much they are consuming and don’t care.
They did however suggest that students, especially those who are active along Oxford road might benefit from such a patch as it would help prevent them becoming future alcoholics. It would make them aware of how much they are consuming before the addiction has the chance to take hold.
Overall they believed our patch had potential and they think that especially amongst the younger generation such as students it would help prevent future alcoholics from appearing. As far as alcoholics are concerned, this patch would not be appropriate for them as it is more of a psychological issue which they are facing.
