The state is slated to receive $1.5 billion from the settlement fund over the course of 18 years, and is required to use the funds to subsidize treatments and programs aimed at reducing Opioid Use Disorder (OUD).
New Hanover County, whose rate of opioid overdose deaths surpasses the state's, will receive about $36 million out of the settlement fund. The first round of funds was released last year.
As a condition to participating in the settlements, the Collaborative Opioid and Mental Health Planning and Strategy Sessions (C.O.M.P.A.S.S) were formed as a coalition between service providers and stakeholders within the community and local government to plan how the settlement money should be allocated.
The most recent C.O.M.P.A.S.S meeting was held in January, where organizations offering opioid remediation services met to discuss their plans for the new fiscal year.
There, OpiAID, a data science company based in Wilmington, presented the details of their initiative called the Compassionate Technology Project, one of many programs in New Hanover County being financially supported through the settlement fund.
The company is partnering with Coastal Horizons Center — a nonprofit that provides various services to promote a healthy lifestyle for people in recovery across Eastern North Carolina, to help revolutionize the treatment of OUD, said David Reeser, the founder and CEO of OpiAID.
Since October, OpiAID has distributed 15 Samsung Galaxy Watches to clients and patients at Coastal Horizons.
Reeser said he wants to boost the standard of care that Coastal Horizons already provides by gathering insights from their electronic health records, and assessing an individual’s withdrawal response through the use of AI-powered smartwatches.
“We have the only working algorithm in the world that is able to detect withdrawal and quantify the level of withdrawal an individual is experiencing and confirm medication dosing,” Reeser said.
"The power behind this is that it allows us to personalize treatment," he said. "And offer insights to clinicians to make better decisions based on real-time data, so we can see what's going on when our neighbors are outside of the clinic and they're among the folks or in the environments where they might have used in The past."
As the watch monitors a client's vitals, the biometric data is then uploaded to their profile in the decision support dashboard OpiAID developed for clinicians to access.
“We worked out a deal with Samsung and a distributor [so] that we're able to embed this technology into the watch,” Reeser said. “The watch has all the functionality that you would expect from a smartwatch, but in the background, it has the ability to fragment out raw data and allow it to be processed through our algorithms and sent through our cloud server to the clinicians at will.”
Like the dashboard of a car that displays tire pressure, engine temperature, and fuel level, Reeser said the decision support dashboard works similarly by presenting their patients’ information in one convenient place.
The watches are not designed to predict an overdose, Reeser said. However, this technology does give clinicians the ability to keep track of biological reactions that may indicate gaps in their recovery process in time to prevent a relapse.
Conversely, paired with medication-assisted treatment, such as dosing with methadone, the devices can be used to indicate what treatment methods are working well.
Jason Black, a program director at Coastal Horizons, said this partnership aligns with their top priority, which is to offer a continuum of care.
“Our number one thing is to reduce barriers and get people connected to treatment as best we can,” Black said. “And the more information, the more data points that we can have to know our clients better and to be able to serve them in a more advanced or compassionate way is huge.”
Assistant Program Director at Coastal Horizons, Matthew Mitchell wrote, “this enhanced tool provides us with deeper insights into our clients’ recovery, allowing us to make more informed and impactful decisions.”
Reeser announced at the C.O.M.P.A.S.S meeting, that OpiAID plans to deploy 85 more watches to Coastal Horizons patients over the next few months.
The watches are free for anyone participating in the program, Reeser said. Patients can have their device delivered directly, or they can consult with a clinician to find out if participating in OpiAID’s Compassionate Technology Project is the best option for them.
“We're really excited to be able to talk about the outcomes that we're going to see, which will be more personalized approaches to the recovery journey,” Reeser said.
