The Company Quietly Making Opioid Addiction Searchable

It happens all the time at one of Palmetto Health’s five emergency rooms in Columbia, S.C., says emergency medicine physician Tripp Jennings. A patient comes in complaining of pain somewhere, and the attending physician types his name into a computer database and discovers he’s already been prescribed ­opioids—a lot of them. On further questioning, the patient cops to struggling with addiction. So instead of opioids, the patient gets a different kind of medication, or in some cases is sent to drug counseling.

Jennings, who’s also the health-care network’s technology chief, says that’s been the routine since late 2015, when Palmetto started using database software made by Appriss Inc. The developer bases its analysis of patient behavior on prescription records from 40 state governments (plus the District of Columbia and Guam), which it’s quietly secured access to over the past few years. “There’s probably not a day that goes by in our emergency department where this doesn’t occur,” says Jennings, who’s personally dealt with three such cases in the past six months. “Before that, you really had to have suspicion of overuse or drug-seeking behavior.”