In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. The most effective way to save someone who has overdosed is to administer a drug called naloxone, but a first responder or bystander can't always reach the person who has overdosed in time. Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital have developed a new device that they hope will help to eliminate those delays and potentially save the lives of people who overdose.
The device, about the size of a stick of gum, can be implanted under the skin, where it monitors heart rate, breathing rate, and other vital signs. When it determines that an overdose has occurred, it rapidly pumps out a dose of . In a , the researchers showed that the device can successfully reverse overdoses in animals.
With further development, the researchers envision that this approach could provide a new option for helping to prevent overdose deaths in high-risk populations, such as people who have already survived an overdose. "This could really address a significant unmet need in the population that suffers from substance abuse and opiate dependency to help mitigate overdoses, with the initial focus on the high-risk population," says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the senior author of the study. The paper's lead authors are Hen-Wei Huang, a former MIT visiting scientist and currently an assistant professor of electrical and at Nanyang Technological Universi.