Project Aims To Streamline Opioid Data, Focus Resources

The first round of projects to tackle Indiana’s opioid epidemic through Indiana University’s Grand Challenge were announced this week. One effort seeks to create a more comprehensive data picture.

The Indiana Addictions Data Commons will provide healthcare providers, law enforcement and public health officials a statewide information clearinghouse. The reference tool will be created by the Regenstrief Institute as part Indiana University’s statewide “Responding to the Addiction Crisis” challenge.

Regenstrief President and CEO Peter Embi says project can serve as a pillar for other tenets of the initiative.

“We know that by bringing a lot of this data together and then augmenting it with some of the data we have at state level from government,” Embi says. “We can get a better idea of where the crisis is happening, where the hot spots are, where we need to be mobilizing resources to be able to address this.”

Embi says Indiana already has a lot of opioid data, but it needs to be streamlined.

“So we have a lot silos of excellence, I like to say, but we need to bring them together so we can actually get a much better picture of what’s happening to Hoosiers,” Embi says.

The project will also collect behavioral and community level data.

The IU Grand Challenge has committed $50 million to the initiative.