Prescription Opioid Dependence in Western New York: Using Data Analytics to Find an Answer to the Opioid Epidemic

Opioid dependence and overdose is on the rise. One indicator is the increasing trends of prescription buprenorphine use among patient on chronic pain medication. In addition to the New York State Department of Health’s prescription drug monitoring programs and trainingprograms for providers and first responders to detect and treat a narcotic overdose, further examination of the population may provide important information for multidisciplinary interventions to address this epidemic. This paper uses an observational database with a Natural Language Processing (NLP) based Not Only Structured Query Language architecture to examine Electronic Health Record (EHR) data at a regional level to study the trends of prescription opioid dependence. We aim to help prioritize interventions in vulnerable population subgroups. This study provides a report of the demographic patterns of opioid dependent patients in Western New York using High Throughput Phenotyping NLP of EHR data.