Opioid abuse takes a huge toll on human life and the problem is getting worse. Just this year, overdose from misuse of prescription or illegal opioids overtook road accidents as the most common cause of accidental death in the #US. In #Canada, the situation has been called a “national health crisis.”

It’s such a huge problem that tackling it was identified as a key priority by Barack Obama earlier , and $1.1 bn ringfenced for developing and providing solutions.

Now data scientists at non-for-profit healthcare insurance providers Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBST) have entered a partnership with Big Data analytics architects at Fuzzy Logix on a data-driven project that could prove to be a key part of the solution.

The project used years’ worth of pharmacy data, along with claims data, both from BCBS’s customers and others, through a third-party sharing agreement. #Analysts quickly found they were able to highlight risk factors that could indicate whether a person could be in danger of developing an opioid abuse problem. This will hopefully allow doctors and other specialists to step in and offer preventative care before the problem gets out of hand.

By examining the data, analysts were able to determine that certain traceable behaviors – such as frequent use of different prescribers and dispensaries, in combination with each other, were predictive of a chance of later presenting with an abuse or misuse issue.