Hospice and palliative care provider VITAS Healthcare is launching an opioid dosing tool within its app.
The tool, designed for providers caring for patients with serious illnesses, aims to determine an opioid dosage that treats pain effectively while considering an individual patient’s end-of-life plans.
It uses data on a patient's pain level, medical condition and current pain drug regimen to...
About the authors: Dr. Sofia Noori (@sofianoori) was a member of the 2019 Flare Capital Partners Scholar Class and is currently a psychiatry resident at Yale School of Medicine. She is the curriculum lead for Innovation to Impact, a substance use entrepreneurship program funded by the National Institute for Drug Abuse.
Dr. Dan Gebremedhin (@dangebremedhin) is a partner at Flare Capital Partners...
Earlier this week digital substance-abuse-recovery platform Ophelia landed $2.7 million in seed funding, according to Forbes reports. The latest round was led by General Catalyst, Refactor Capital and Y Combinator.
WHAT THEY DO
Ophelia focuses on helping folks with an opioid use disorder quit. Patients first are required to go to an in-person visit with a physician in order to get a...
The opioid epidemic has devastated the US with soaring rates of overdoses. While the drug Narcan can be used as an antidote for opioid overdoses, if a patient is alone they cannot always administer the medication.
Now researchers from Purdue University are looking to tackle this problem with a wearable system that will release the antidote automatically.
“A lot of time patients who overdoes are...
This morning San Francisco-based telemedicine platform HeyDoctor announced that its customers will now be able to receive naloxone, including Narcan, through its website and mobile app.
Users will first go through a text chat-based consultation with a physician on HeyDoctor about how and when to use the medication, which can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. The prescription can then be...
When it comes to treating the opioid crisis, digital tools may be able to tackle some of the trickiest issues that the current care model cannot, according to a recently released Rock Health report. The report zeros in on some of the major road blocks in treating addiction and how digital could be the key to addressing these needs.
Those challenges include the variability between treatment...
Yesterday the senate overwhelmingly passed a new opioid bill in a 98-1 vote, with only Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) voting against it and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) not voting. The vote expands telemedicine services to people with opioid abuse disorder, exempting it from certain requirements. It also modifies the provisions regarding electronic prescriptions and post-surgical pain management.
Further...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday announced an innovation challenge to address the national opioid epidemic.
Specifically, FDA is looking to the developer community to build digital health technologies, such as medical devices, diagnostic tests and mobile apps to help stem the opioid crisis. The intent is to provide unique approaches to detecting, treating and preventing...
One of the biggest hurdles to addressing the opioid crisis in the US is knowing what alternative, non-opioid medications to prescribe for the treatment of chronic pain. Physicians struggle with a complex, patchwork system of state guidelines and regulations that vary with each particular state.
Enter Avella, a Phoenix-based specialty pharmacy that has just launched a new mobile app aimed at...
