Assessing Risk

How is our tool different?

There are existing risk assessment tools for opioids in practice, including the Opioid Risk Tool (ORT) and the Screener and Opioid Assessment for Patients in Pain (SOAPP). Both of these tools were created through longitudinal randomized studies, following groups of opioid pain patients and assessing their outcomes. While these tools are certainly helpful, they cannot assess the holistic risk of a patient. Rather, they use a static point system in which each feature always contributes the same amount of risk for each person. In addition, both existing tools were created from studies with fewer than 300 subjects, while the Opioid Misuse Risk Tool (OMR-Tool) was trained on data from over 50,000 subjects. Our tool is an improvement over the static point system because it looks at each risk factor as it relates to the full picture of the patient; we incorporate the idea that every person is different and take into account the interaction between different risk factors. Updating the current static risk tools, to incorporate new insights emerging from related research, would require an entirely new longitudinal study for each update; whereas the OMR-Tool model can be retrained with updated data anytime with minimal service interruption.

What does your score mean?

The report results from the OMR-Tool are not diagnostic. Rather, they are meant as guidance for physicians to facilitate a conversation with each pain patient about their individual risk for opioid misuse and dependence. When a physician is considering prescribing opioids to a patient for short or long-term pain, they can refer to the tool’s output, which contains the patient’s risk of opioid misuse based on a trusted dataset with over 50,000 subjects. The doctor will use their knowledge of the patient along with the OMR report to determine the best pain management plan for the patient, as well as to introduce the concept of opioid risk to the patient using real numbers and personal information. Many patients see opioid addiction as a “drug problem” rooted in poor or risky life choices rather than an issue that could affect any person at any time. Our tool is not meant to dissuade physicians from prescribing opioids if they are in the service of the patient’s overall health. Instead, it's purpose is to enable physicians to make more informed decisions about prescribing opioids.


OMR-tool