Vancouver co-op creates app to prevent ODs among alone users

VANCOUVER — A Vancouver technology co-operative is gaining recognition for developing a mobile app and three other digital monitoring tools aimed at preventing overdoses, especially among drug users who are dying alone.

Brave Technology is the only Canadian participant among 12 companies awarded $200,000 in the Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge, and they are all now vying for a $1-million grant to come up with technical solutions to address the overdose crisis.

Oona Krieg, chief operating officer for Brave, said people would log on to the Be Safe app before using their drugs to connect with trained volunteer responders ready to step in with the overdose-reversing medication naloxone or call an ambulance.

“You’re connected to a community responder who will stay on the phone with you,” she said.

The next phase of testing the app, which has been in development for a year, is expected to begin in Vancouver next month.

Krieg said Be Safe, like the other tools under development, is intended to act as a form of digital supervision for people who use drugs alone and would never go to supervised consumption sites.

“The idea is to end the isolation and to be able to respond to an overdose quicker than somebody else calling 911,” she said, adding the app would also enable people to make connections with responders and get information on clean needles, wound care, or a referral to treatment.

Another app being developed would allow members of the community to register to be trained as responders.

Krieg said families of people who have died, those who have survived an overdose, and citizens looking for ways to help with the opioid crisis are stepping up to take action.

“One of the first things that can end the isolation is community-member response,” she said.

The BC Coroners Service said 88 per cent of the 878 overdose deaths between January and

July occurred indoors, among people who used alone or were with someone who didn’t call 911.

Brave is also developing an internet-enabled “button” that would be installed in rooms of supported housing complexes, for example, so drug users can press it to connect with trained staff in the building, Krieg said.

“The whole premise is you press the button when you’re about to use and within three to five minutes someone comes and checks on you.”

An 11-day pilot project involved mounting the buttons in 17 rooms of a supported housing complex in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Krieg said.

“The results were that people were pressing the buttons when using, and three overdoses were reversed. For the other 68 per cent ... who’d used the button, there was no need for a reversal but people were checked on.”