Artificial Intelligence Can be Leveraged to Minimize Casualties of the Opioid Epidemic

The crisis of opioid use, abuse, addiction, and subsequent overdose deaths has reached epidemic proportions in America with no clear end in sight. As of March 2018, the National Institutes of Health reported that more than 115 Americans per day are dying as a direct result of opioid overdoses. In late 2017, it was reported that the US life expectancy had dropped for a second consecutive year, due in part to a surge in fatal opioid overdoses. For perspective, US life expectancy had not dropped for a single year since 1993, which at the time was a direct result of the AIDS epidemic, and had not dropped for consecutive years since the 1960s. Further, the CDC has estimated that as a result of only prescription opioid abuse, the total yearly economic burden to the United States totaled upwards of $78.5 billion--including the costs of health care, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and involvement of the criminal justice system--and clearly this shocking figure excludes the abuse of illicit opioids, such as heroin.