A group in Texas is crowdsourcing information on nonfatal overdoses, helping fight the public health epidemic of opioid addiction and abuse, Kaiser Health News reported July 5.
The Texans Connecting Overdose Prevention Efforts project, run by the TxCOPE team at the Austin-based University of Texas, is helping to track overdoses. The project relies on community support and crowdsourced data to measure the rate and pattern of overdoses in the state. The data can then be used to focus supplies and resources such as naloxone training into areas that need it most.
"You are able to really home in on those areas with laserlike focus," said Christopher Bailey, a project coordinator working at an El Paso health center.
TxCOPE's efforts aim to fill gaps left by the federal government given that most data collected about nonfatal overdoses is collated from hospital emergency rooms, leaving out many cases from official databases, the report said.