Help for Weary First Responders

Mehta “We don’t have effective support systems to help our first responders.” Joel Hallberg

Ranjana Mehta is exploring noninvasive neurostimulation — the use of targeted electrical pulses to certain regions of the brain — as a potential solution for fatigued first responders.

“We don’t have effective support systems to help our first responders,” says Mehta, a professor of industrial and systems engineering in the UW’s College of Engineering whose research includes human performance under fatigue and stress. “They are just figuring it out on their own, how to manage their fatigue. As a fatigue researcher, it becomes my responsibility to do something that really works for them.”

Neurostimulation is used to treat a wide range of medical conditions, from intractable depression to heart failure. In work published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroergonomics, Mehta and collaborators at Pennsylvania State University interviewed fire and emergency medical services professionals about the prospect of using neurostimulation to counter fatigue, then analyzed the responses and detailed the ethical considerations of such technology. They found that more than half of the subjects were interested in neurostimulation as a countermeasure to fatigue.

The first responders’ biggest concerns were autonomy over using a device, privacy regarding their usage data, and the long-term safety of neurostimulation. They also raised questions about the wearability of any device, which is why Mehta is working with a team of students in the Department of Biomedical Engineering’s undergraduate design program to create a system that fits inside a hard hat.

Published in the Summer 2025 issue