The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) announced Qlarion has been awarded a contract to construct a data-sharing and analysis platform that will improve Virginia’s response to the opioid crisis. The contract is funded through a Technology Innovation for Public Safety (TIPS) grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to Virginia Department of Health data, 1,268 individuals died from an opioid overdose in Virginia during 2016. During that same period emergency medical services (EMS) administered Narcan to 4,076 individuals to reverse opioid overdoses. The DCJS Opioid Data Sharing and Analysis Platform will offer its partners and participating organizations across Virginia broad use of shared data relating to the opioid crisis for scientific research and analysis, which should lead to improved evidence-based decision-making across their organizations. This includes decisions related to policy and strategy development, project design and implementation, performance monitoring, program evaluation, and learning and adapting to improve responses to the opioid crisis.
“Bringing together information from many different data sources throughout the Commonwealth – from health and criminal justice to education and transportation – is integral to providing a complete picture of the magnitude of the opioid crisis and helping to develop a plan to address it,” said Jake Bittner, CEO, Qlarion. “Through this data sharing and analysis platform we are empowering medical professionals, members of the criminal justice and court system, and local treatment centers with information from across the state so they can make important decisions as they fight this epidemic.”
“Virginia saw its highest number of opioid overdoses last year,” said Shannon Dion, Director of DCJS. “We are optimistic that with this data-sharing platform, we can develop models and real-time data to better prevent opioid use, overdoses and deaths, as well as target opioid-related crimes.”