The United States is currently experiencing an opioid overdose epidemic, as drug overdose deaths have become a leading cause of injury and death, with recent estimates reporting that 115 Americans die each day from drug overdose.

Goals is a solution that aims to prevent addictions in people that have been prescribed opioids.

Brief

Find a healthcare topic that you are passionate about and design for it

Delivered

Primary & Secondary Research, Iteration sketches, High fidelity wireframes.

Tools

Figma

Project type

• Research with Grace Dai, Solo for the rest
• 6 weeks
  

Plan ahead

Stay on track with a planning system that not only informs you when to take medication, but also promotes activities to help with a smoother recovery.

Goal Oriented

Track and make progress over time with the help of incremental goals that react to the amount of medication taken in a day. Goals stay more attainable to achieve higher motivation.

Learn and Progress

Look at your performance on a weekly basis and learn from your trends and get motivated to improve or continue the good work!

The Problem

In the 1990s, there was a massive marketing blitz from pharmaceutical companies for their new opioid pills.

This coincided with a nationwide push to take patient pain more seriously. Early marketing materials from pharmaceutical companies made reassurances about their product, claiming their opioid pills were virtually non-addictive.

However, heroin is one of the most addictive drugs on the planet and prescription opioids are chemically similar to heroin. 

Scale

Opioid addiction causes 1 in 5 young adult deaths in the USA

Total economic burden of $78.5 billion per year

75% of people who became addicted to opioids in the 2000s started with prescriptions

[SOURCE]

Affected Demographic

People between the age of 16-28 are currently being affected the most.

Standard Treatments

• Medicine
• Counseling/behavioral therapy
• Medication-assisted therapy MAT (considered most effective
• Residential/hospital based treatment

New Treatments

• Psychedelic Therapy
  • Ibogaine

• Neurological pain treatments
  • Radio waves
  • Neuro-Stim System Bridge (a device that sends electrical impulses to the brain)

Field Interviews

Adam, 22

Recovering from opioid addiction

Sanjay, 30

Recovering from opioid addiction, works as an addiction counselor

Danny, 30

Recovering from opioid addiction

Journey Map

Insights and Opportunities

Keys to a successful recovery

Social support

Structure

Honesty

Problem Statement

It is easy for people to get addicted to pain medication because they are often not aware of the risks

Brief

How might we guide people through the prescription period to avoid opioid addiction to allow for an easy recovery

Ideation

Idea 1 was a pill constraint that warned the user when they were going over their prescribed limit.

Idea 2 calculates potential addiction through usage stats so that the user knows their status.

Idea 3 uses direct input to provide dependancy statistic and offers usage over time data to show progress.

The final image is a pill bottle that can record when a pill is taken

Email

hridaew@gmail.com