Staying in Treatment

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Anchor lead: People undergoing treatment for drug addiction during Covid-19 may lack technologies that can be very helpful, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Portable electronic medicine boxes can help dispense needed medications to people who are in treatment for drug addiction, but they most often also need additional technologies. Eric Strain, a drug abuse expert at Johns Hopkins, identifies the issues.

Strain: A lot of patients don’t have the technology that they need for telehealth visits, and that’s become a real issue. They typically have phones, they may not have smart phones, or if they have smart phones they have data plans that limit it they don’t want to use that for a Zoom visit. There are concerns about the confidentiality using Zoom, negotiating EPIC is difficult for some of them. So there’s still some bumps in the road that need to be addressed in some way but certainly there’s a population where it does seem to work.  :30

Strain and colleagues are working to find ways to address these barriers to helping people remain in treatment for drug addiction. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.