Digital Health Supports The Fight Against Opioids

The widespread U.S. opioid & overdose crisis is an ever-increasing tragic concern for everyone: writhing victims, family members being fain to see their relatives suffer or die, doctors prescribing opioid pain-killers what they thought before as safe, and regulators imposed to handle a tough situation. Addiction. It’s painful to even read about the skyrocketing numbers of people suffering, thus we decided to map how digital health could help tackle the opioid crisis. Why is it so difficult to deal with the opioid crisis? Once you become addicted, it sticks with you for a long time, if not for life, just as a chronic disease. You may overcome the lowest points, where nothing matters anymore, where there is only the vegetating shell of you and the stuff: drug, alcohol, medication, but even if you manage to battle the substance – and yourself, for that matter – the skeletal ruins of addiction will wait in a shadowy corner to take shape again due to a breakdown induced by psychological or environmental factors. In the worst case scenario, addiction eats up lives, families, communities. It takes enormous willpower coupled with professional help to get out of such an unbearably deep hole, a supportive social environment, and an appropriate medical infrastructure. The relapse rate is between 40-60 percent, meaning that treatment and rehabilitation need to be persistent and planned for long-term. Moreover, not only the psychological, physical or social but also the financi...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Bioethics Mobile Health Virtual Reality in Medicine AI artificial intelligence data data analytics drugs future gc3 Innovation opioid opioid crisis pharma technology wearables Source Type: blogs