As opioid overdoses spiral, first responders and public health agencies are adopting a smartphone application that tracks both deaths and rescues as they happen.
This article was originally published at Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, and was written by Christine Vestal.
In the summer of 2016, drug overdose deaths in Baltimore were exploding and health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen told federal Drug Enforcement Administration officials the city needed real-time data to better manage its public health response.
Four months later, the DEA’s Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) team had developed a smart phone application that could be used by first responders to record the time and location of overdoses and transmit the information to a regional mapping database.
Today, that tool, known as ODMAP, is used by more than 250 law enforcement, first responder and public health agencies in 27 states.