Semantic App Helps Researchers Understand Prescription Drug Abuse

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There’s been a lot of attention given to the issue of prescription drug abuse, in the wake of violent crimes such as one last year that left four people dead in a pharmacy shooting in Suffolk County, New York. A recent study from the Workers Compensation Research Institutealso shows that prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States, with over fifteen thousand people dying last year from an overdose.

What, you may ask, does any of this have to do with semantic technologies? Dr. Amit P. Sheth, Wright State University Kno.e.sis Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing director and LexisNexis Ohio Eminent Scholar, and Dr. Raminta Daniulaityte of the school’s Center for Interventions, Treatment and Addictions Research (CITAR), have a ready answer : PREDOSE, an application for understanding pain-killer drug abuse through the semantic analysis of social media conversations.

More specifically, it’s automated data collection and analysis tools to process web-based data to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of addicts, related to buprenorphine, OxyContin and other pharmaceutical opioids. It’s a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded project created by a partnership between Kno.e.sis and the CITAR.

Read more at semanticweb.com