Phone App Created In Md. Tracking Opioid Overdoses
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- As opioid-related deaths skyrocket across the country, local police and public health officials are fighting the epidemic from their cellphones.
First responders can use an app on their phones to report overdoses or opioid-related deaths, mapping the deadly drug in real time and across state lines.
Each of the small blue dots on the map mark survival -- a drug user who overdosed but lived. Red triangles are much more sinister.
Thousands of color-coded points are tracked inside an office where those fighting the country's opioid epidemic have become cartographers, mapping the drugs.
"Drug distribution knows no bounds. Drug use knows no bounds," said Jeff Beeson, High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program deputy director.
That's the basis for ODMAP.
Developed by the HITDA program, Beeson says it's the first app to follow waves of opioids across city and state lines, down to the minute down to the street corner and in real time.
"Law enforcement can now pinpoint areas of need. They can put undercover cops in those areas. They can build cases to take down the people selling the poison, the drug dealers," Beeson said.
In the new war on drugs, the technological tool helps officers to predict the flow of killers, like fentanyl, so they can cut off the supply.
It also notifies health care workers to target high-risk areas for education and recovery.
"Now they know the time of day that they're hitting on average. They know the areas and locations. They're able to take that limited resource and pinpoint it," Beeson said.
The epidemic is more challenging now than ever before.
In the first nine months of 2017, opioids killed 1,500 Marylanders. More than 500 of those deaths happened on the streets of Baltimore.
As the drug trade picks up speed, Beeson says more agencies nationwide are signing into ODMAP to stay one step ahead.
"Folks can get a kind of early warning alert to say, 'Hey they had a spike last night, we could be next.'" Beeson said.
The program launched in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and West Virginia and is now used by agencies in 19 states and growing.
Find out more information on the app and how it's helping build a database on drugs by watching the below video of "Baltimore Standing Together," a town hall on the opioid epidemic.
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