Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital entered into a research collaboration with ideas42, a nonprofit behavioral design laboratory.
The multi-phase collaboration aims to help emergency care patients who need treatment for opioid use disorder. Together, the partners will use behavioral science insights to enhance emergency department opioid use disorder protocols.
MGH and ideas42 will develop interventions from a diagnosis process that includes interviews with physicians, addiction specialists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants as well as patients to better understand the attitudes and barriers toward opioid use disorder protocols in the ED. The organizations will pilot the interventions in MGH's ED and test them using randomized controlled trials. The collaboration will span one year.
"Science-based service delivery design rooted in the realities of human behavior is a great new tool for healthcare providers, with the potential to impact everything from flu shots to the opioid epidemic," said Ted Robertson, managing director at ideas42.