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Google Medicine

Alphabet's 'Verily' Plans to Use Tech To Fight The Opioid Crisis (cnbc.com) 121

Posted by EditorDavid from the health-plans dept.
"Verily, Alphabet's life science division, is building a tech-focused rehab campus in Dayton, Ohio to combat the opioid crisis," reports CNBC. Verily will join two health networks, Kettering Health Network and Premier Health, to create a nonprofit named OneFifteen. Alexandria Real Estate Equities will design and develop the campus, which will offer both inpatient and outpatient services. There is no single solution to treating substance abuse, with strategies spanning from intensive rehabilitation programs to drop-in meetings. Verily hopes to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn't work in helping people get and stay sober....

Initially, Verily will focus on understanding what works in the clinic and then track patient behavior when they get out to see what sticks, Danielle Schlosser, senior clinical scientist of behavioral health at Verily, said in an interview. Verily will use a "variety of means" to track what works, she said, adding that patients would have to consent to being monitored... OneFifteen CEO Marti Taylor said "Because we will have facilities, an entire ecosystem and data, we'll be able to take a more holistic understanding of a person's health both inside and outside as we follow them long-term."
Verily's blog points out that Americans under 50 years old are more likely to die from unintentional overdoses than any other cause, and that two-thirds of those deaths involve an opioid. "In the face of one of the greatest public health crises the U.S. has seen, we feel compelled to act," they write, saying their company is "focused on making health information useful so people can live healthier lives."

Their blog says their team recognized "the absence of high quality information to guide individuals, communities, and legislators" for picking effective recovery treatements. "Leaning into our capabilities of building health platforms, we are setting out to create a 'learning health system' that aims to address this critical information gap in addiction medicine."
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Alphabet's 'Verily' Plans to Use Tech To Fight The Opioid Crisis More

Alphabet's 'Verily' Plans to Use Tech To Fight The Opioid Crisis

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  • Obvious plan (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday February 10, 2019 @12:08AM (#58097582) Journal
    Finally a good use for the Google business model.

    1) Make a new product (selling drugs)
    2) Wait until it becomes popular, undercutting the competition
    3) drive competitors out of business
    4) ????????
    5) Discontinue the product
    6) Everyone is off drugs cold turkey and profit!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      7) Detect the users.
      8) Sell the long term treatment plan that only works while buying and using the treatment product.

    • Well, at least it's a business model they have experience in. They already call their customers users and they have an experience with giving stuff out for free at first, then tightening the screws.

  • Opioid use ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Sunday February 10, 2019 @12:10AM (#58097590)
    Opioid use is the symptom, not the illness. We need to figure out why the US is the #1 consumer of opioids per capita in the world -- why, in a country of such abundance, people feel the need to numb their pain and escape their lives.

    • Re: Opioid use ... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Economic inequality. The USA has some of the worse Gini coefficient of all developed nations, similar to that of a third world country. So although the country at first clove might appear rich in terms of GDP, in reality all the wealth is concentrated in a tiny percentage of its citizens (the 1%) and the average American certainly isn't rich anymore.

      • I was about to reply the same thing. Interesting you were modded troll...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The assumption here is that the correct way to stop opioid overdose is to stop opioid use.

      But the kind of screw-ups that cause overdose, such as measurement, mislabeling, bad instructions....these could also all be resolved by making recreational opioid use legal and well-regulated.

      Take the production and distribution channels out of the hands of criminals and put in the hands of reputable businesses that are answerable to regulatory bodies, and you will see most of these problems solve themselves.

      Of course

      • A lot of people die fresh out of rehab, after their tolerance has been lowered to the floor, and they try to resume use. People often donâ(TM)t OD until they have a period of abstinence. There are 110 year old Chinese people who have been addicted to opium since their teens. Prohibition and the drug war kills far more people than opioids.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. Also, why are there _still_ no drugs available that are cheap, safe, have minimal side-effect and provide a similar escape? Even with high-quality opioids, people can lead productive lives and get to a pretty old age. Imagine what a modern alternative could do. The whole thing would not be a crisis anymore. But some people just cannot stand when others have fun from anything but prayer.

      • Re:Opioid use ... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by LostMyAccount ( 5587552 ) on Sunday February 10, 2019 @07:32AM (#58098354)

        I keep thinking there must be a way to engineer a close-to-optimal recreational drug and wonder why it hasn't happened.

        As for design criteria:

        * Diminishing returns on adding additional doses. Either because the drug itself can't bind to receptors beyond some optimal dose, or because its some kind of binary drug with its own antagonist which isn't potent enough until you take the 3rd or 4th tablet. IIRC, some sublingual buprenorphine formulations include nalaxone, which makes them useless for injection but the nalaxone has weak oral bio-availability, so when taken orally it doesn't take effect.

        * Relatively short half-life, losing effectiveness after about 4 hours. This might help with ancillary problems where a user has poor motor reflexes or where long-term side effects contribute to some of the problems of "drug use". If you could get pretty high and then it went away relatively quickly, it'd be better than getting moderately high but having the effect last 8 hours, at least from a behavior/lifestyle/side-effects basis.

        * No synergistic effects with common other drugs. Try to avoid the problem of taking $engineered_drug and alcohol or other drugs and making a worse or dangerous effect.

        It seems like if we had a *better* drug that was legal we'd solve a lot of problems and perhaps keep a lot of people from bothering with more dangerous, expensive black market drugs.

        Cannabis seems to pretty close to this, but not quite perfect.

        • Cannabis is easily available, much less expensive than heroin, won't unexpectedly kill you, or lead to extremely harmful behavior. I have never seen a junkie transition from heroin to pot, leaving the heroin behind. And I have years of wrenching personal experience with a very close family member who had been addicted to heroin for years, but is now free after a full one year residential program. Cannabis is not near close enough.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Incidentally, Heroin of standardized, medical quality will also not "unexpectedly kill you" and if it is readily available and cheap will not "lead to extremely harmful behavior". The thing that may do both is Alcohol.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          I think the reasons why it has not happened are purely ideological: There is a class of authoritarian religious fuckup that does not want people to have any fun except in prayer. They tried to ban alcohol as well and we all know how well that turned out. And, unfortunately, these people are powerful enough to prevent research globally. Well, for all I know, there are drugs like you describe tested and ready to be manufactured, but they are being kept secret because of the crusade going on.

          • I think you're mostly right about the ideological/religious/control reasons historically, but I'd also guess it might not have been possible from a science perspective until maybe the last 20 years to make something truly revolutionary.

            And by revolutionary, something euphoric along the lines of an opiate but nearly idiot proof for the common man -- something that would "work" but not result in overdoses, addiction and be resistant to chronic over use. I'd wager for a lot of the population who were mindful

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              I agree. As to the psychological addiction part, that is probably part of the personality and cannot be solved, ever. It also works for sugar, for example. The solution is simple: Just make sure the side-effects of the addiction are still acceptable. If somebody really wants to spend all their time in an altered state, nothing can really be done about that.

        • It seems like if we had a *better* drug that was legal we'd solve a lot of problems and perhaps keep a lot of people from bothering with more dangerous, expensive black market drugs.

          See? That is the thing. Pleasure is verboten. Absolutely 100% off limits. We are supposed to open ourselves to the suffering, gladly accept it and welcome it into our lives. Pleasure is merely avoiding this suffering which is required to make sure that we are as pure as can be.

          No. Your pleasure seeking is morally wrong.

          (do you understand why there are no legal methods for non-negotiable pleasure?)

      • I recall reading about a synthetic derivative of salvinorin that had similar mu-opiate receptor activity as the opium derivatives, indicating they would provide a similar high. But it did not desensitize the receptors in the same way that other opiates do. The researchers speculate this compound could produce a similar high, without the same degree of tolerance and dependence.

        I think it's more likely that, rather than official research continuing, this ends up for sale online somewhere, then gets banned q

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Profit.

    • We need to figure out why the US is the #1 consumer of opioids per capita in the world

      Well, ever since Sherlock Holmes died - opioid use in Great Britain has cratered.

    • We don't need a research project for that, it's deadly obvious - people hear nothing but badmouthing about how terrible this country is from morning to night, despite the fact that they are warm, safe, wealthy (by world standards), and have things absurdly easy. A bunch of fucking whiners, they feel like everything is absolutely terrible, even though they are living in the greatest country on earth in the best time to be living here.

      • The people begging for money on "go fund me" to cover the costs of treating their illnesses and injuries sure don't feel wealthy. The people working 60 hour work weeks so that they don't lose their jobs don't feel wealthy. The people working through their illnesses and injuries for fear of being fired don't feel wealthy. The guy living on my porch doesn't feel warm.

        Look beyond your own living situation to see how maybe you are fortunate but others are not. Then look where all the national wealth is going. T

    • Why are you worried about the deplorables dying? Aren't you far left? You hate these people, remember?

    • . We need to figure out why the US is the #1 consumer of opioids per capita in the world

      What do you think?

    • "why, in a country of such abundance, people feel the need to numb their pain and escape their lives."

      Because we haven't been a country of abundance for a long time. There is an ongoing 40+ year economic depression in the "flyover". A depression that was engineered and maintained by public policy choices with bipartisan support. A depression which has transformed the once prosperous cities of the heartland into wastelands of despair.

      My brother, open your eyes. And travel west of the Hudson now & then. ;

    • Well duh. The Jewish (work with me here) bankers insist that controlling payroll costs is the path to great wealth.

      This idea is, evidently, true. The issue is that it is a path to great wealth at the expense of "everyone" else. It is not true wealth.

      So yeah, there is a LOT of wealth here in America, but very very few get to taste any of it. Imagine knowing that the people around you can run off to Tahiti whenever things get too stressful but you can't even afford to go out to eat and NEVER get respite from

  • What's the ulterior motive? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Don't be evil my are.

    I don't trust Google/alphabet one bit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      This. It hardly takes any reading between the lines to see that Google, as usual, wants all of the data about all the people. "We will use all this data to figure out good tactics for ... yeah, the opioid epidemic, that's it."

  • In Two Years (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cmdln Daco ( 1183119 ) on Sunday February 10, 2019 @01:46AM (#58097774)

    In Two Years when Google decides this isn't something they are interested in anymore, and they pitch the whole thing, what will become of the dependencies they have created in 'clients'?

  • How is this Googles business anyway? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Are their employees heavy opium users? Or is it just an attempt to maneuver into a position of government?
    "We are a big company, we should control every aspect of peoples lives" - Alphabet

  • Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Sunday February 10, 2019 @02:30AM (#58097856)

    Google's track record with managing data related to healthcare is about as bad as it can get. Remember Google's epic failure to predict flu outbreaks? Remember Google's violations of patient privacy & breach of contract with the UK's National Health Service? This is nothing more than a time-wasting distraction from an important issue.

    How about prosecuting & jailing the executive board of Purdue Pharma for their role in creating the epidemic of prescription opioid addiction & abuse? We're supposed to put people who enact dangerous, harmful, criminal behaviour in jail, right?

    • If we jail the Sacklers, can we please also jail the evil sadomoralists who were told "if you address excess prescribing by forcing all people (even those who need their dose) down or off their meds with these drug cop written medical guidelines and disgraceful doctor prosecutions, you're going to create a massive wave of overdose deaths as people get street drugs instead, and cause countless more to kill themselves outright when they can't get relief from chronic pain", then proceeded to do it anyway?
      Or i

  • Jailing doctors and big pharma (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Sunday February 10, 2019 @03:17AM (#58097920)

    Seriously, how are these doctors and phama guys not in jail?
    Why are they prescribing opioids for everything in the US? I friend of mine got her wisdom teeth out and she was prescribed 50 opioid pills?
    When I got mine out in Europe, I was given ibuprofen.

    It seems clear that your doctors are given kickbacks from big pharma in order to get as many people addicted as possible. The doctors, in this case, are government sanctioned drug dealers and pharma is Columbia.
    How is this accepted by you guys? Why is it OK? Something, something freedom?

    • My, the old "Europe is SO SUPERIOR, AmeriKKKa is SO DUMB" narrative just never gets old. It hasn't been seen on Slashdot for what, a few hours now? Go on, next tell us about how great the metric system is.

    • It's not big pharma that are profiting after the addiction has started, though. So it's hardly in their best interest to create an addict.

      Maybe fentanyl isn't all bad. Turns it into a self-solving problem, hmmm?

    • I friend of mine got her wisdom teeth out and she was prescribed 50 opioid pills?
      When I got mine out in Europe, I was given ibuprofen.

      You would think there would be a happy medium. Pulling wisdom teeth is a traumatic event for your mouth/body. The first few hours, pain should be mediated through opiates (until we find something more effective). After that, ibuprofen is fine for reducing swelling, which is where a majority of the pain will be coming from after those first few hours.

      But no. We get ibuprofen or addictive amounts of opiates. What the fuck is going on here? Why is NOBODY rational about this? Why does it have to be one extreme

  • the opioid crisis comes from pharmaceutical companies making profits

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