This App Can Save Someone from Overdosing on Opioids

To help save lives from overdosing, three people joined together to develop Second Chance. Dr. Jacob Sunshine is a professor at the UW School of Medicine and he teamed up with UW researchers Rajalakshmi Nandakumar and Shyamnath Gollakota to develop Second Chance. Thanks to funding by both the National Science Foundation and the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute. The app turns “ a smartphone into a short-range active sonar, using frequency shifts to identify respiratory depression, apnea and gross motor movements associated with acute opioid toxicity.” Basically it monitors a person’s breathing pattern and how they move. If the app detects decreased or no breathing, it will alarm the person to interact with it. If they don’t respond, that’s when it reaches out to emergency services or a trusted friend/family member with access to naloxone, the drug that saves people from overdosing. 

The app has only been tested on illegal injectable opioid use due to those being the most common overdoses. According to CNBC, the researchers say that the app works 90 percent of the time and works up to 3 feet away. The app was tested at Insite, the supervised drug consumption center in Vancouver, Canada. 

When overdosing, the person is powerless to call for help. According to the NIH, over 130 people die in the US everyday from overdosing on opioids. It is an epidemic that we don’t hear about enough. The National Safety Council issued an analysis yesterday stating for the first time, americans are more likely to die from opioid overdose than a car crash. 

Sources:

CNBC

Fast Co. 

National Institute on Drug Abuse