South Bend Tribune
Sometimes there’s no telling where you’ll find a solution to a problem.
In this case, the problem is deadly — an opioid crisis that took more than 76 lives in 2018 in St. Joseph, Marshall, Elkhart and LaPorte counties.
A potential solution? An app developed by a group of Ivy Tech Community College students, including from South Bend and Elkhart, that would connect community members with Narcan, a drug that counteracts opioid overdoses.
The app was born out of the fourth annual AT&T FirstNet Public Safety Hackathon in Indianapolis. It also paid $7,000 in prize money. But the takeaway here is that students, faced with trying to help solve a real-life crisis that impacted one of the students in the group directly, came up with a possible solution.
The app could be used to signal the immediate need for the drug and have it sent within a certain distance, which would be potentially faster than an ambulance and without the need to call 911.
“Basically all you would have to do is push a button on a screen if you or someone you know is overdosing,” said Soto Garcia, one of the team’s leaders. “The goal was to have a far reach in order to get someone to respond to the emergency as soon as possible.”
Time is critical in treating someone in the midst of an opioid overdose, and this app, created by a group of creative, caring college students could eventually help a lot of people.
