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Patent Awarded for Opioid Risk System with Geographic Data

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(geralt, Pixabay)

30 Nov. 2021. A company analyzing public health data by geography and social factors received a patent for its system identifying likely opioid addiction hot spots. HSR.health in Rockville, Maryland received patent number 11,177,040 titled “Risk identification and response” from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on 16 November.

HSR.health is a three year-old enterprise developing analytical models calculating health risks with data compiled from a variety of open or public sources offering detailed geographic identifiers as well as social, economic, and environmental variables. The company says its data are highly granular, down to individual neighborhoods, to offer detailed analytics serving point-of-care needs of health care providers, governments, and specific industries affected by health factors, such as commercial airlines.

HSR.health says its lead product, called GeoHealth Platform, is built on a multiple-cloud architecture, secured with blockchain, and available over the web, including mobile devices. The platform, says the company, offers sophisticated data analytics with artificial intelligence and visualization tools to support individual queries. GeoHealth data can also be downloaded and analyzed locally, rather than through the cloud. The company says its service offers several indices as part of a standard package for health and hospitalization risks that include Covid-19, quarterly Medicare costs, social analytics related to health, health inequities down to local levels, and drivers of poor health outcomes or high costs.

Correlate opioid addiction risks with social factors

The patent covers a system for compiling and analyzing a variety of structured and unstructured geographical, social, and health data to identify risk factors for opioid addiction and overdoses. The system calculates opioid addiction risk scores,  down to individual localities that can be summarized on a dashboard and displayed on a map. The data can also correlate opioid addiction risks with individual social factors and integrate into other databases, including electronic health records and emergency response systems. In addition, the system can discriminate between abuse of legally prescribed medications and illegal substances, as well as correlate sources supplying opioid drugs with high-risk communities.

“This patent,” says Ajay Gupta, CEO of HSR.health in a company statement released through Cision, “solidifies our approach to identifying the at-risk population for early intervention and necessary care or counseling, so they do not fall victim to an overdose, addiction, or contribute to diversion.” Gupta and co-founder Ram Peruvemba, the company’s chief medical officer, are listed as inventors on the patent.

HSR.health says the patented technology can be extended to other high-risk health conditions, such as complications from type 2 diabetes, highlighting social factors contributing to diabetes, to help find persons likely to develop the condition. Early identification can help make lifestyle changes to prevent the onset of diabetes, and the costs to themselves and their families.

The company says it filed six other patents applying the company’s technology for identifying more health risks and outcomes. Those patents include systems for risks of adverse maternal or infant health complications, spread of infectious diseases, severe complications and mortality from disease, spread of diseases in enclosed spaces or communities, and need for medical devices and testing to respond to disease outbreaks including pandemics.

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