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Alphabet's 'Verily' Plans to Use Tech To Fight The Opioid Crisis (cnbc.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the health-plans dept.

"Verily, Alphabet's life science division, is building a tech-focused rehab campus in Dayton, Ohio to combat the opioid crisis," reports CNBC. Verily will join two health networks, Kettering Health Network and Premier Health, to create a nonprofit named OneFifteen. Alexandria Real Estate Equities will design and develop the campus, which will offer both inpatient and outpatient services. There is no single solution to treating substance abuse, with strategies spanning from intensive rehabilitation programs to drop-in meetings. Verily hopes to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn't work in helping people get and stay sober....

Initially, Verily will focus on understanding what works in the clinic and then track patient behavior when they get out to see what sticks, Danielle Schlosser, senior clinical scientist of behavioral health at Verily, said in an interview. Verily will use a "variety of means" to track what works, she said, adding that patients would have to consent to being monitored... OneFifteen CEO Marti Taylor said "Because we will have facilities, an entire ecosystem and data, we'll be able to take a more holistic understanding of a person's health both inside and outside as we follow them long-term."
Verily's blog points out that Americans under 50 years old are more likely to die from unintentional overdoses than any other cause, and that two-thirds of those deaths involve an opioid. "In the face of one of the greatest public health crises the U.S. has seen, we feel compelled to act," they write, saying their company is "focused on making health information useful so people can live healthier lives."

Their blog says their team recognized "the absence of high quality information to guide individuals, communities, and legislators" for picking effective recovery treatements. "Leaning into our capabilities of building health platforms, we are setting out to create a 'learning health system' that aims to address this critical information gap in addiction medicine."

9 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Obvious plan by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    Finally a good use for the Google business model.

    1) Make a new product (selling drugs)
    2) Wait until it becomes popular, undercutting the competition
    3) drive competitors out of business
    4) ????????
    5) Discontinue the product
    6) Everyone is off drugs cold turkey and profit!

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re: Obvious plan by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Google has that problem solved!
      Give the drugs away free and make it up on volume.
      ???????
      Profit!

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Obvious plan by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      7) Detect the users.
      8) Sell the long term treatment plan that only works while buying and using the treatment product.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  2. Opioid use ... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Opioid use is the symptom, not the illness. We need to figure out why the US is the #1 consumer of opioids per capita in the world -- why, in a country of such abundance, people feel the need to numb their pain and escape their lives.

    1. Re:Opioid use ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The assumption here is that the correct way to stop opioid overdose is to stop opioid use.

      But the kind of screw-ups that cause overdose, such as measurement, mislabeling, bad instructions....these could also all be resolved by making recreational opioid use legal and well-regulated.

      Take the production and distribution channels out of the hands of criminals and put in the hands of reputable businesses that are answerable to regulatory bodies, and you will see most of these problems solve themselves.

      Of course, we should *also* have clinics and programs for those who get addicted and need help regaining control. A tax on the opioids is a great way to pay for that.

    2. Re:Opioid use ... by LostMyAccount · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I keep thinking there must be a way to engineer a close-to-optimal recreational drug and wonder why it hasn't happened.

      As for design criteria:

      * Diminishing returns on adding additional doses. Either because the drug itself can't bind to receptors beyond some optimal dose, or because its some kind of binary drug with its own antagonist which isn't potent enough until you take the 3rd or 4th tablet. IIRC, some sublingual buprenorphine formulations include nalaxone, which makes them useless for injection but the nalaxone has weak oral bio-availability, so when taken orally it doesn't take effect.

      * Relatively short half-life, losing effectiveness after about 4 hours. This might help with ancillary problems where a user has poor motor reflexes or where long-term side effects contribute to some of the problems of "drug use". If you could get pretty high and then it went away relatively quickly, it'd be better than getting moderately high but having the effect last 8 hours, at least from a behavior/lifestyle/side-effects basis.

      * No synergistic effects with common other drugs. Try to avoid the problem of taking $engineered_drug and alcohol or other drugs and making a worse or dangerous effect.

      It seems like if we had a *better* drug that was legal we'd solve a lot of problems and perhaps keep a lot of people from bothering with more dangerous, expensive black market drugs.

      Cannabis seems to pretty close to this, but not quite perfect.

  3. In Two Years by Cmdln+Daco · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In Two Years when Google decides this isn't something they are interested in anymore, and they pitch the whole thing, what will become of the dependencies they have created in 'clients'?

  4. Misleading by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google's track record with managing data related to healthcare is about as bad as it can get. Remember Google's epic failure to predict flu outbreaks? Remember Google's violations of patient privacy & breach of contract with the UK's National Health Service? This is nothing more than a time-wasting distraction from an important issue.

    How about prosecuting & jailing the executive board of Purdue Pharma for their role in creating the epidemic of prescription opioid addiction & abuse? We're supposed to put people who enact dangerous, harmful, criminal behaviour in jail, right?

    --
    Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
  5. Jailing doctors and big pharma by pablo_max · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seriously, how are these doctors and phama guys not in jail?
    Why are they prescribing opioids for everything in the US? I friend of mine got her wisdom teeth out and she was prescribed 50 opioid pills?
    When I got mine out in Europe, I was given ibuprofen.

    It seems clear that your doctors are given kickbacks from big pharma in order to get as many people addicted as possible. The doctors, in this case, are government sanctioned drug dealers and pharma is Columbia.
    How is this accepted by you guys? Why is it OK? Something, something freedom?