The Food and Drug Administration has chosen a team supervised by a small Venice, Calif.-based startup as the winner of an industry challenge to establish a mobile app to assist connect opioid consumers experiencing an overdose with nearby carriers of the drug naloxone for emergency treatment. Startup-led team has got victory in FDA opioid overdose app contest.
The OD Help app, established by Team PwrdBy, beat 44 other submissions to take home the cash prize of $40,000, claims Peter Lurie, MD, the FDA’s associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis. Startup-led team has got victory in FDA opioid overdose app contest.
“OD Help is a convenient, easy-to-use mobile app created to connect potential opioid overdose victims with a crowd-sourced network of naloxone carriers,” wrote Lurie in a December 15 blog, further adding that the app “can conveniently be tailored for use in rural or urban regions by expanding or contracting the radius within which naloxone carriers are sought.”
In the month of September, the FDA inaugurated the Naloxone App Competition in an attempt to tackle the dramatic increase in the number of U.S. opioid overdose deaths, several of which could be ignored if people experiencing an overdose had immediately got the life-saving medication, in accordance to the regulatory agency. Although, until now, no app has been available to connect those carrying naloxone with nearby opioid overdose victims.
Among other significant features, OD Help has an optional interface with a breathing monitor to track when a victim’s breathing rate is very low, a symptom of an opioid overdose. “Therefore, if the victim is alone and not able to call for help, OD Help will track the diminished breathing and alert a naloxone carrier of the potential overdose,” Lurie stated.
Other characteristics of the FDA opioid overdose app involve: just alerting people in one’s support network and permitting naloxone carriers to disable alerts when they are not able to respond, as well as giving instructions on how to rightly diagnose an overdose/administer naloxone and contact emergency medical services when assistance is needed.
Lurie asserts that OD Help “has the potential to make a real difference in the fight against opioid overdose.” Representatives from PwrdBy weren’t instantly available for comment.
The FDA hosted a code-a-thon October 19 and 20 at its White Oak campus in Silver Spring, Md., to establish the concepts and initial prototypes. More than 100 people participated either in-person or virtually in the 2-day event.
The rules of the competition needed participants to submit a video of a functional app prototype along with a comprehensive summary of their concept for a crowd-sourced mobile phone app that could assist to accelerate delivery of naloxone to a person experiencing an overdose. The video of the OD Help app can be viewed here.
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