U-Turn Training, Consultancy & Empowerment (‘U-Turn’) www.u-turntraining.com have developed an app to help people respond to opiate overdoses to prevent deaths. The app is currently available for download from the Android market, priced at £1.99 initially, and will also be available from the Apple store in March. This Belfast-based company is owned by Chris Rintoul and Iain Cameron (Buff) and was set up in 2011 in order to reduce harms caused by drug use. Both of us have extensive experience in the drugs field and as trainers which we bring into the business.
Opiates are drugs which include morphine, codeine, methadone and heroin, and include both prescribed and illicit drugs. These have a high potential for causing fatal overdose through respiratory failure. Conservative estimates put the number of problem opiate users in the UK at over 300,000 (although the actual number may be far higher). The UK and Ireland have a high number of deaths caused by opiate overdose, particularly in Ireland and Scotland. Many people who overdose are alive when first discovered by someone else but die before emergency services arrive. We wanted to empower the people who are first on the scene to give the overdose casualty the best chance of survival. Our market research showed that there was no interactive overdose guides available on any of the main platforms for smartphones and tablets. The few overdose apps that were available were quite static and relied more on good memory recall than giving detailed guidance for the specific situation.
Therefore our app is the first-ever to include a highly interactive ‘Emergency’ section guiding the user through the specific actions they need to take, depending on the state of the casualty and whether there is an opiate reversal drug called naloxone available. This section gives clear audible advice, written instructions and drawings and has large ‘press-button’ options. This allows the user to navigate the appropriate pathway for the situation they have encountered. It can also link the user directly to the emergency services.
Additionally we have provided a number of other sections including ‘Your Guide’ and ‘Useful Information’. The guide acts as a training manual which has 2 purposes; firstly, familiarity with it will save vital seconds if the user ever has to press the ‘Emergency’ section button and secondly, to inform people of how to prevent overdoses in the first place (prevention, as always, being better than cure).
We were encouraged and supported in various ways by colleagues in the overdose field locally and internationally. Of particular note are Adam Hanna of Resuscitation Training Services, Stephen Malloy from the Scottish Drugs Forum, Prof. Pat O’Hare and his team in HIT in Liverpool and Nigel Brundson of Injecting Advice. Martindale Pharma, HIT and Harm Reduction International all gave us some financial support towards the development of the product for which we are very grateful. The technical development of the app was overseen by Tim Wilson of OKO, based in Killinchy, Co. Down.
Although we have to make an initial charge of £1.99 for downloading the app, our aim is to be able to give it for free to the people who most need it as soon as possible. A free app is more likely to be downloaded and therefore increases the potential it will have to save even more lives. In order that this might happen we hope we need further sponsorship; if you would like further information or to offer help please contact us at enquiries@u-turntraining.com.
