A software product that empowers individuals affected by substance use disorders and their care teams with health and social resources

Project Summary Access to community resources such as housing, food, transportation and medication also known as social determinants of health (SDOH) has been shown to be critical for a successful treatment and recovery of substance use disorders (SUD). Therefore, case managers and social workers at various points-of-care (e.g. law enforcement sobering centers, primary health centers) dedicate time to identify community resources that may address their patients’ health and social barriers. However, identifying competent community resources remains a challenge as they are usually stored in manual “referral binders” which are highly duplicated and fragmented across organizations. Therefore, this significantly contributes to lack of direct access to recovery capital for individuals affected by SUD. Based on preliminary data and interviews with case managers and social workers, this SBIR Phase I study has two objectives. 1) Evaluate whether a co-creation led business model that will leverage partnerships with organizations that have SUD subject matter expertise (e.g. Houston Recovery Center - https://houstonrecoverycenter.org/) can provide enhanced access to SUD treatment services and community resources at the point-of-care. This is important as most points-of-care particularly primary health centers may not have care teams highly experienced in curating SUD related resources. Therefore, our innovation will facilitate the flow of SUD related community resources from organizations with SUD subject matter expertise to those without, such as primary health centers. 2) Establish the feasibility of a novel computational natural language processing (NLP) algorithm in matching health and social needs identified at the point-of-care to relevant and competent community resources. Our hypothesis is that the co-creation led business model coupled with a novel computational natural language processing (NLP) algorithm will lead to enhanced access to appropriate SUD recovery and healthcare resources. Finally, upon successful completion of Phase I, a future Phase II project will focus on establishing whether these innovations have a positive impact on the utilization of SUD recovery support services, encounters with law enforcement and EMS services.Project Narrative Social factors such as housing, transportation and medication have a significant impact on substance use treatment and recovery outcomes. This Phase I proposal will establish a novel co-creation model that leverages local community partnerships to curate community resources. In addition, our novel software technology prototype will match patients’ health and social needs with resources at the point-of-care to improve the quality of care for patients with substance use disorders.