Region’s opioid battle gets boost from big data
Verily, local hospitals will work to use data to inform addiction treatment.
A big tech power is coming to Dayton through the most ambitious project yet undertaken by a healthcare affiliate of Google — tackling the opioid crisis.
Verily — a company formerly known as Google Life Sciences — announced this week it is planning to operate an opioid rehab campus, to be called OneFifteen, through a partnership with the Dayton region’s two largest hospital systems, Premier Health and Kettering Health Network. OneFifteen will start taking patients this spring.
The announcement this week drew national media coverage, and the leader of one of the largest Ohio hospitals left that job to become CEO of OneFifteen.
The campus is still being developed. It will initially include a 10,000-square-foot building on Hopeland Street and 22,000 square feet of leased space in Kindred Hospital, at the corner of Albany Street and Edwin C. Moses Boulevard.
Thefifinal campuswill have a behavioral health treatment center, rehabilitation housing and will treat patients regardless of their insurance status.
“Recovery, asmany of us know, is not a 28-day process. It requires not only medical treatment but also longer-termsupport to build resilience. It requires stable housing, employable skills and transitions back to family life,” said Marti Taylor, president and CEO of OneFifteen.
Taylor previously led University Hospital at Ohio State University and was the COO of the OSU Ross Heart Hospital.
Data not anecdotes
Anonymous patient data will be gathered “to inform future care and add to the growing knowledge on the mo ste ff ff ff ff ff f fe ct ive practices and evidence-based principles,” according to Wright State University Boonshoft School ofMedicine, which is a partner on the project.
“This effort will implement tangible and realistic community solutions,” said Julie Gentile, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry.
The mental health and addiction treatment fifields have not historically done a great job using patient-level data to fifine- tune treatment, said Adam Brooks, director of research at Philadelphia-based Public Health ManagementCorp. Hiswork has included research to improve substance use disorder treatment.
He said behavioral health providers collect datawhen they initially assess someone or when they need to satisfy insurance requirements, but providers don’t do a great job using real- time patient data to monitor recovery and refifine their approach over time.
“We are constantly relying on anecdotal success rather than practice-based evidence, which we could get if we were better at marshaling data,” Brooks said.
Some of the challenges are low funding. Also, the outcomes of addiction therapy can be harder to measure and quantify compared to other medical fifields.
“It’s always been a diffifficult task, and because it is a diffifficult task it has been diffificult to get the fifield to prioritize,” Brooks said.
A promising aspect of the OneFifteen campus and its plans to analyze data is that it will bring different levels of care together on one campus, he said. For policy makers and researchers, it can be diffifficult to put data togetherwhencare is disconnected, and records aren’t always shared between rehabilitation facilities, outpatient care and other providers. One Fifteen data will be able tomeasure outcomes as patients move through different layers of treatment and recovery.
“It may notmatter for the fifirst patients that are willing to contribute their data, but for the patients that come after them, it will matter very much,” he said.
JonasThom, vicepresident of behavioral health at Dayton-based CareSource, said there need to bemore tools for feedback and coordination of care to keep upwith innovation and investment in physical health.
“We defifinitely see a need for more evidence and technology and innovation in behavioral health and in substancetreatment ,” Thom said.
In an example of how technology and data can be used to improve outcomes in behavioral health, CareSource used claims data and reached out to providers, which contributed to a 50 percent reduction in the quantity of opioids prescribed to itsmembers company-wide by the end of last year.
Building on progress
The full 4.5 acre campus is expected to be completed in 2020. It is in the Carillon neighborhood near the Elizabeth Placemedical facility.
Along with the One Fifteen buildings there will also be some “mixed use” buildings. Developers say they don’t have specific plans yet on what could be in the buildings, thoughOneFifteen offifficials are looking for uses that wouldcomplement the organization and address community needs. OneFifteen is set up as a non-profifit organization, according to the company.
Clinical care will be provided by Samaritan Behavioral Health, which is part of Dayton-based Premier Health, apart neron the project. Taylor said about 40 to 60 people will be hired to work at the center.
Project offifficials say that if the approach is successful, the project could serve as a prototype for sim ila ref ff ff ff ff ff for ts to combat the opioid crisis in other cities around the United States. Bloomberg reported that taking on the opioid epidemicmay beVerily’s“ undertaking yet.”
It’s not clear howthe project will be funded or what its revenue projections are.
Offifficials with Verily, Premier and Kettering Health declined to detail howmuch eachpartner is contributing, but said all the partners are making “significant” contributions. Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a publicly traded real estate investment trust, will develop the campus.
“This is not a short-term undertaking, and it will require deep commitment fromall of the partners and the broader community to have an impact on this complex issue,” Verily said in a news release.“We hope that the work of OneFifteen will be a cornerstone in advancing the field of addiction medicine, demonstrating the value of investing in behavioral health and improving the health of communities.”
OneFifteen is gearing up as Dayton organizations are already making progress in responding to the opioid overdose crisis — work that’s been nationally recognized for its early progress in lowering the number of overdose deaths.
The opioid overdose fueled 566 accidental overdose deaths inMontgomery County in 2017, according to Public Health-Dayton & Montgomery County. The preliminary number of overdose deaths for 2018 is 292.
The region adopted an emergency management approach and created the Community Overdose Action Team. Services such as syringe-exchange programs and overdose-reversal medications worked to reduce harmanddeathfrom addiction. There have been local efforts to help those in recovery fifind work and receive services so they can sustain recovery.
OneFifteen’s investment will build on exist inge ff ff ff ff ff ff or ts and innovations, saidThom, pointing toe ff ff ff ff ff ff or ts by groups like Public Health-Dayton & Montgomery County and Montgomery County Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health Services
“I think we’ve done a lot of great things. I certainly welcome this continued investment in this space,” Thom said.
OneFifteen will incorporate an effffffffffffort to open a regional crisis stabilization unit and detox center that has beenunderway formore than a year. The center was proposed as a $4.3 million project by the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association and received $800,000 in the state capital budget approved in 2018.
Verily will bring funding and its expertise to the project. Originally called Google Life Sciences, Verily was launched in 2015 and is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Prior to thisproject, the company has worked on life science hardware and software projects. Its stated goal is to make health data more useful.
On Jan .3, Verily announced it raised $1 billion in an investment round, saying the money will support growth areas such as “investments in strategic partnerships, global business development opportunities, and potential acquisitions.”
It is already involved in projects to tackle other big health care problems. It’s working on a project to fifififight disease-spreading mosquitoes through the release of sterile mosquito es to eliminate the ones that carry disease. It has designed utensils for people with tremors and software for diabetes management.
Danielle Schlosser, senior clinical scientist atVerily, said the company brings experience toOneFifteen in developing health platforms and leveraging data.
“We’re looking to lean on that expertise and apply it to the learning health system framework that OneFifteen will be adopting,” she said.