Google is working with an addiction treatment center in Ohio as it tries to tackle the opioid crisis, Bloomberg reported Sept. 27.
The Dayton facility, OneFifteen, enters patients' drug use history, along with their medical records, into a database operated by Verily Life Sciences, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, to provide individualized treatment plans, according to the story.
Verily opened the center in 2019, marking Big Tech's largest venture into the opioid crisis, and it has since treated about 5,200 patients, Bloomberg reported. The company took its name from the 115 Americans who died every day from opioid overdoses in 2016, a number that has since increased to nearly 300.
OneFifteen started with backing from Dayton-based Premier Health and Kettering (Ohio) Health, and hired its president and CEO, Marti Taylor, MSN, RN, away from the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, according to the story.
While OneFifteen has been slow to implement many of its tech-driven approaches to drug rehab because of the pandemic and data issues, Bloomberg reported, it has been expanding its telehealth program and app and hopes to eventually use machine learning to predict opioid overdoses. Nan Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton and Ohio's Democratic nominee for governor, told the news outlet she envisions the center becoming the Cleveland Clinic of opioid addiction treatment.