Can technology play a role in solving the opioid overdose epidemic?

As the opioid epidemic continues to ravage communities across the country, state and federal regulators have been taking unprecedented actions to help contain the crisis.

The U.S. government released data last month showing that nearly 1.3 million Americans landed in the hospital in 2014 due to opioid abuse, representing a 64 percent increase in inpatient admissions and a 99 percent increase in emergency room visits since 2005.

With about half of overdoses linked to prescription painkillers, rather than illegal versions of the drug, opioid manufacturers are under intense scrutiny.

And as part of their efforts to combat abuse, the pharma industry is now looking at digital tools to help prevent opioid addiction or treat it more successfully. At the annual meeting of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the industry group representing biotech companies, a number of digital health players were on hand to showcase how they believe technology could help solve the problem.

“Our approach to addiction is a little bit broken,” said Beth Rogosinski, chief content officer at Boston-based Pear Therapeutics. Rogosinski spoke at a digital health summit held concurrently with the BIO conference.

Pear has developed a mobile app called reSET that’s meant to complement an outpatient treatment program. It includes a patient component that can be accessed on a smartphone and a web-based interface for clinicians.

Compared to face-to-face therapy, the advantage for patients is that they don’t need to take off work, arrange childcare or find transportation to get to their appointment, Rogosinski said. And results from a Pear study showed that patients using the program were more likely to become or remain abstinent than those receiving therapy in person.

Digital treatment programs, which are also being tested for a host of chronic diseases, represent just one area for innovation.

Other companies are looking at ways to prevent opioids from being prescribed in the first place. They include Waltham, Mass.-based NeuroMetrix, which makes a product called Quell. The wearable neurostimulation device triggers pain centers in the brain to produce its own opioids, according to Dr. Shai Gozani, the company’s CEO.

Firsthand Technology, a San Francisco-based virtual reality company, is also looking at new ways of helping people manage their pain.

“Opioids don’t really cure us of anything; they just dull us out,” said Firsthand Technology CEO Howard Rose.

Patients who used virtual reality to manage their pain reported a 48 percent decrease in time spent thinking about pain and a 38 percent decrease in pain unpleasantness, Rose said at the digital health summit. In contrast, opioid users reported only a 10 percent decrease in time thinking about pain and a 16 percent decrease in pain unpleasantness.

Even opioid manufacturers are testing new technologies that they hope will be able to help patients use them more appropriately, allow doctors to prescribe them more effectively and improve clinical studies involving pain pills.

Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin and other opioid drugs, is partnering with Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System on a study involving the Apple Watch. An app on the watch will allow patients using Purdue’s painkillers to track whenever they’re feeling pain.

“We’re very interested in wearable technologies for pain,” said Tracy Mayne, Purdue’s head of medical affairs strategic research, in an interview. “We’re looking at heart rate and physical activity to come up with an algorithm that identifies is this or not a pain episode. Could we come up with a device that effectively measures pain?”

In addition to gathering data, the program will also suggest non-opioid options for pain relief to help people decrease the number of pills they take.

Beyond the study with Geisinger, Purdue is looking at other ways to objectively determine whether someone is in pain—signals that doctor-shopping patients can’t fake. One possible area would be measuring certain hormones in blood and sweat, such as the “fight or flight” hormones that are produced under stress.

The efforts come as government agencies across the country have attempted to hold drug makers accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic.   

A number of states and counties have filed lawsuits against the country’s largest opioid manufacturers for marketing efforts that they insist downplayed the risks of their products. And the Food and Drug Administration, in a first, requested that Endo Pharmaceuticals withdraw its long-acting opioid, Opana ER, from the market.

Malvern, Pa.-based Endo did not respond to a request for comment. The company last week agreed to work with the FDA to stop selling Opana ER but stressed in a statement that it “remains confident in the clinical research and other data demonstrating Opana ER’s safety and efficacy, as well as its favorable risk-benefit profile when used as intended in appropriate patients.”

Ninety-one people die of opioid abuse each day, a number that has more than quadrupled since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And public health officials blame the rise in opioid-related overdoses for bringing the country’s total overdose death rate to record numbers last year.

Opioid abuse drives up healthcare costs, lowers productivity and strains law enforcement resources. The drug is responsible for about 60 percent of all overdoses, said Dr. Aenor Sawyer, an orthopedic surgeon who also works within the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Digital Health Innovations.

“This is a big problem; it’s a bad problem,” Sawyer said.

Purdue has also worked on a number of low-tech initiatives to help reduce the number of opioids in people’s medicine cabinets. In North Carolina, for instance, it was able to show a reduction in overdoses after initiating a take-back program for people’s unfinished prescriptions, pills that can be stolen or wind up in the hands of addicted family members.

“The opioid crisis is the biggest thing facing the country right now,” Mayne said. “We agree with the FDA: we want safer opioids out there.”

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