Paolo Deluca is Professor of Addiction Research at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. With a background in cognitive and developmental psychology, he has over 25 years’ experience in addiction research. His work focuses on health services and public health, with a particular interest in digital interventions and clinical trials. He currently leads the NIHR-funded project on Virtual Reality-enhanced Cue Exposure Treatment and is co-PI at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Hull. Professor Deluca has contributed to numerous UK and EU studies on substance use prevention and treatment, including SIPS and Psychonaut projects.

Abstract

Understanding cocaine craving and use in environmental settings: Quantitative findings

This study aims to explore and gain a greater understanding of how cocaine craving occurs and to define physiological changes to identify cocaine use and craving. This study has an overall objective to develop and test an integrated smartphone app-based and wearable sensor-initiated Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) and Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAI) to provide personalised and time-sensitive assessments and interventions for cocaine craving and use. Participants accessing drug services for their cocaine use wore an Empatica Embrace Plus and answered smartphone-delivered EMA surveys for 28 days. Researchers spoke with the participants on Day 1, Day 14 and Day 28. At all meetings with researchers, participants completed health questionnaires and a TimeLine Follow Back (TLFB) for their cocaine use. Data collection commenced in February ending August 2025. The analysis will extract craving and non-craving segments from the Empatica EmbracePlus. This will be used to identify unusual patterns in the wearable data that might indicate cravings and/or cocaine use during non-craving periods. Given the iterative process of developing and refining the algorithms, data analysis will be ongoing from the start (Feb–August 2025). The conclusion will be determined once the analysis is completed.