Police in Massachusetts are testing a new database for documenting opioid overdoses they hope will help departments share information in real time and get people into treatment. It's an innovative approach, Varano said, because agencies typically rely on older public health data about fatal overdoses and don't know the prevalence of nonfatal overdoses and because it gives them a quick way to communicate about that data. Given the skyrocketing number of overdoses, Allen said the departments had no choice but to figure out what they could do to help people. Allen is also speaking with police departments in other parts of the country interested in the new database. More than 33,000 people died from drug overdoses involving opioids nationwide in 2015, and preliminary data for the first three quarters of 2016 indicate that the drug overdose death rate is still increasing, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Source: ABC News August 14, 2017 14:26 UTC