The opioid epidemic is ripping through America like a fire untamed. Blame big pharma, if you want. Blame cheap pain pills and cheaper heroin. Blame the mesolimbic reward system. Just don't wallow in it - the blame. Wallowing takes time, and with opioid abuse killing close to 100 Americans a day, time is in exceedingly short supply. "The number one question is, how do we get a better sense of what's going on in our communities in real-time," says Jeff Beeson, deputy director of the Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Not a year from now. Not a month from now. Today.

So last year, the Washington/Baltimore HIDTA set out to create a tool that would give law enforcement and health officials the data they need to respond to the public health crisis as swiftly as possible. The result was a web app called ODMAP that combines street-level data with tools from Esri, the digital mapping company, to help public health officials, police departments, and first responders track and respond to overdoses in real time.

Health and law enforcement officials I spoke with about the tool say they like it because it's simple, powerful, and free. First responders at the scene of an overdose (Beeson says there are currently close to 1,000 registered nationwide) log in to ODMAPvia a password-protected web portal. The interface lets these so-called Level I users specify whether the overdose was fatal, whether they administered naloxone, and, if they did, how much. That information, along with the time and location of the overdose, goes to ODMAP's central database. For first responders, that's all there is to it; the process takes seconds to complete and requires no personal information about the victim.

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