A creative way to fight the opioid crisis

<p>South Bend Tribune</p>
<p>Sometimes there’s no telling where you’ll find a solution to a problem.</p>
<p>In this case, the problem is deadly — an opioid crisis that took more than 76 lives in 2018 in St. Joseph, Marshall, Elkhart and LaPorte counties.</p>
<p>A potential solution? An app developed by a group of Ivy Tech Community College students, including from South Bend and Elkhart, that would connect community members with Narcan, a drug that counteracts opioid overdoses.</p>
<p>The app was born out of the fourth annual AT&amp;amp;T FirstNet Public Safety Hackathon in Indianapolis. It also paid $7,000 in prize money. But the takeaway here is that students, faced with trying to help solve a real-life crisis that impacted one of the students in the group directly, came up with a possible solution.</p>
<p>The app could be used to signal the immediate need for the drug and have it sent within a certain distance, which would be potentially faster than an ambulance and without the need to call 911.</p>
<p>“Basically all you would have to do is push a button on a screen if you or someone you know is overdosing,” said Soto Garcia, one of the team’s leaders. “The goal was to have a far reach in order to get someone to respond to the emergency as soon as possible.”</p>
<p>Time is critical in treating someone in the midst of an opioid overdose, and this app, created by a group of creative, caring college students could eventually help a lot of people.</p>