Every 22 days, the number of people killed in the US by opioid-induced overdoses exceeds the number of people killed in September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda in New York and Washington D.C. Meanwhile, the Council of Economic Advisers reported in November 2017 the opioid crisis’ total cost to the economy was around $504 billion in 2015.
All hands are needed on deck to fix the crisis, and data science/AI practitioners have stepped up to deliver evidence-based policy recommendations and patient treatment plans.
More information about this data science/AI effort was published in GovernmentCIO Media:
Mission LISA is a data aggregation initiative surrounding America’s opioid crisis that seeks to provide stakeholders and policymakers with more timely and relevant data to drive evidence-based solutions for crisis prevention, treatment, and interdiction. To achieve its mission, Mission LISA has partnered with Lumina, a Tampa-based big data analytics company that provides data aggregation and risk sensing technologies to corporations and governments around the world.
Using deep web mining and machine learning technology, Lumina is systematically capturing real-time content at scale from open-source data found online, down to specific data points. This data provides policymakers and healthcare service providers with timely and relevant intelligence surrounding the current state of the crisis and solutions on how to best combat nationwide overdose death and addiction.
[…]
The Treatment-Seeking Mesh uses behavioral analytics to highlight individuals who have exhibited interest in treatments for opioid use disorder and other health problems associated with opioid use, pinpointing areas where opioid use may be prevalent. Data from this system will show how the epidemic is escalating across the nation and project the movement of the epidemic before it takes hold in a given area.