Local tech leader looks to data to help tackle opioid crisis
Posted Mar 15, 2018 05:28:24 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Last year, 71 people in Waterloo Region died from opioid-related overdoses.
But Dana Fox of Athena Software is hoping to bring that number down.
Fox and a team of eight scientists are working on how data can be used by cities across the country to reduce the number of overdoses.
Fox says the first step is to use a transformational, rather than a transactional approach.
“Transactional is you need to apply an antidote to a person who has collapsed in an ally, a transformational one is why is the person in an ally? And it may have been something that took place several years earlier.”
Fox has started the Institutue for Smarter Government, and is exploring how cities can use data to reduce the number of deaths.
He says his team of scientists have already made significant progress, that cities can use right away.
“We can now say, I can help predict the future impacts on municipalities, we can estimate the number of people who will be effected, I can also estimate the number of people who are going to die. I can now identify the factors that are leading to the use of opioids and their contribution in every community across Canada.”
Fox hopes the data can be used be cities to effectively plan a comprehensive opioid strategy.
