AiCure is starting a major clinical trial to monitor and intervene with patients receiving medication as maintenance therapy for opioid addiction.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded company has developed the SaaS platform that uses artificial intelligence for advanced facial recognition and motion-sensing to confirm medication ingestion. Said platform can work on any smartphone to automatically detect whether the person is taking their medication as prescribed without the need for human supervision. Patients who take incorrect doses or do not use the software are automatically flagged for immediate follow-up.

The statistics are showing that the economic cost of opioid abuse is estimated to exceed $55 billion annually. That is why the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has provided $1 million in funding to assess whether patients using the AiCure platform are more adherent and whether adoption of the system can improve treatment duration and reduce the risk of relapse.

The large trial is being carried out with the Cincinnati Addiction Research Center (CinARC) at the University of Cincinnati. A total of 130 participants will be enrolled over the course of 12 months. Preliminary results of the trial are expected to be published in August 2015.