Health IT Is In The Front Line To Try And Stem The Opioid Crisis in The US – Relevant Here Too!

This appeared last week:Providers turning to health IT to combat the opioid crisis By Marla Durben HirschPublished December 26 2018, 7:49am ESTProviders have begun to harness technology to improve their management of opioids and avoid misuse. It ’s not a moment too soon. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent reports, released in November, confirm that the opioid crisis is worsening. The number of drug overdose deaths in the United states in 2017 was 9.6 percent higher than in 2016. The rate of drug overdose deaths involving natural and semisynthetic opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone has risen steadily since 1999. The rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which individuals frequently turn to when they can no longer obtain prescribed opioids, increased 45 percent betwe en 2016 and 2017. One of the key components to reversing these trends is to keep people from becoming addicted in the first place, says Jim Turnbull, CIO of... This is the initial part of the post - read more by clicking on the title of the article. David.
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: blogs