With the opioid epidemic continuing to ravage the country, U.S. healthcare professionals are searching for answers. This week’s news roundup includes tools to help combat an epidemic, best practice opioid interventions, and recent news addressing the problem, such as how healthcare executives can use IT to stem the crisis, why it’s time to use machine learning to combat it, and a new study linking opioid deaths to painkiller marketing.

How Top Healthcare Executives Can Use IT to Stem the Opioid Crisis

The sheer scope of Americas opioid crisis more than 40,000 opioid overdose deaths just in 2017, and more than 2 million addicted almost defies comprehension. Many of us know one or more of the people that those horrifying numbers represent. We all want to help. While fewer than half of those …
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Study Links Opioid Epidemic to Painkiller Marketing

(Reuters Health) – Researchers are reporting a link between doctor-targeted marketing of opioid products and the increase in U.S. deaths from overdoses. In a county-by-county analysis, they found that when drug companies increased their opioid marketing budgets by just $5.29 per 1,000 population, the number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors went up by 82 percent and the opioid death rate was 9 percent higher a year later.
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Best Practice Opioid Interventions

At one time, pain was under-treated, even among patients dying from cancer, and opioids were reserved to treat only the most severe pain. This gradually changed and assessing and treating pain became so important, it was named the fifth vital sign.
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It’s Time to Use Machine Learning to Combat the Opioid Epidemic (Becker’s Hospital Review)

Deaths from opioid drug overdoses continued to spike, reaching a new high of 70,000 deaths and contributing to a drop in … Read More

Opioid Risk Assessment Tools Combat an Epidemic

Opioid drug overdoses are currently the leading cause of death among Americans under 50, outpacing guns and car accidents. With roughly 64,000 opioid-related deaths in 2016 and 91 Americans dying daily from overdoses (including prescription pain relievers and heroin), the opioid-related death rate has quadrupled since 1999.
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