ECE Grad Student Keeping his Finger on the Pulse of Innovation

Apps help us track purchases, meetings, and the weather. What if they could also help enhance our mental and physical wellness anytime and anywhere?

PULSE8 (Personalized Understanding of Life and Self across 8 Dimensions), a mobile application that integrates ChatGPT with wellness habits, is designed to do just that. 

Developed by Sasan Haghani, electrical and computer engineering teaching professor and capstone coordinator and graduate student, Shreyas Ramachandran in collaboration with Rutgers-New Brunswick's ScarletWell team—Peggy Swarbick, director, and Amy Spagnolo, senior program coordinator—PULSE8 provides tailored personalized feedback based on real-time survey responses. 

Unlike existing AI tools that focus on single health aspects, PULSE8 encompasses wellness habits across eight dimensions: Physical, Intellectual, Social, Spiritual, Emotional, Occupational, Financial, and Environmental. Every 30 days, users answer a series of questions across these dimensions. The application uses an architecture that processes user responses through deterministic rule checks, constructs structured prompts, and delivers concise (two-four sentences) personalized feedback.

The project advances the team's first initiative, the ScarletWell Wellness Widget; a centralized digital interface that simplifies access to wellness events and information.

While Ramachandran has taken part in several research opportunities at Rutgers, the multidisciplinary ScarletWell projects "are new experiences for me, taking what I have learned and applying it to wellness, which I don't have a background in." Ramachandran presented PULSE8 at the IEEE International Conference on ICT Solutions for eHealth in Portugal this past June.

ScarletWell is a novel public health and prevention-focused program promoting the holistic well-being of Rutgers-New Brunswick's 79,000+ students, faculty, and staff. Since 2024, the program has brought a diverse array of wellness-related programming, peer support services, wellness project grant funding, and more to Rutgers-New Brunswick.

"We live in a fast-paced world," Ramachandran notes. "I want to explore AI and what else it can do. I want to keep on top of research and innovation. I hope to not only catch up, but to be at the forefront of this technology one day."