Wearable technologies that may prevent, detect or respond to opioid overdose: a scoping review.
Abstract
Opioid overdose kills over 100,000 people each year globally. Overdose is characterised by respiratory depression. Thus, many possible devices that have the capacity to detect opioid overdose exist or could be designed. Furthermore, mobile health (mHealth) technologies can be used to prevent or respond to opioid overdose. For these technologies to be successful, they must be effective and be acceptable to the at-risk population. The aim of this scoping review is to systematically review mHealth and wearable technologies that may prevent, detect or respond to opioid overdose.
A scoping review and hand-searching of literature was conducted of published articles up to May 2022. APA PsychInfo, Embase, Web of Science and Medline databases were searched for English-language records using Boolean search query, which included some of the following key words: [mHealth OR remote sensor OR wearable sensor OR remote device] AND [opioid OR heroin OR morphine OR naloxone] AND [overdos* OR death OR fatal].
335 records were screened (after removal of duplicates) and 11 studies were included for full review. Included papers adhered to the following five criteria: 1) genuine or prototype device; 2) relating to a device that detects, prevents or responds to an overdose; 3) opioid-focussed; 4) peer-reviewed and 5) original research. The majority (five) were studies of acceptability/willingness to use overdose detection devices, whilst three were studies of devices that use physiological/biometric data to detect, but require intervention to respond to, overdose. Two articles were devices that automatically respond to an overdose crisis using physiological input and one was on feasibility of a smartphone-facilitated bystander alert-response network.
Wearable technology for opioid overdose has a crucial position in responding to the ongoing global opioid crises. This scoping review identifies key areas of research and knowledge gaps, including testing devices against medical grade equipment in laboratory and community settings.