Sonara Health Awarded NIH Funding to Fight the Opioid Crisis

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Oct 14, 2022, 08:34 ET

Sonara Health Awarded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant from the National Institutes of Health to further develop its Medication Monitoring System for Take-home Methadone

DALLAS, Oct. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonara Health was awarded an SBIR Phase I grant in the amount of $267,861 administered by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and co-funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), both part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to further develop and validate its web application for expanding access to take-home methadone medication for patients in opioid treatment programs. This project was designed to expand access to treatment to combat the opioid epidemic and save lives. CDC reported more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2021 and two-thirds of those deaths involved fentanyl or another synthetic opioid. Sonara was designed to improve patient-provider trust and promote increased access to take-home methadone for opioid treatment programs and their patients.

The project is entitled Remotely Observed Methadone Evaluation (ROME), awarded to Sonara Health (formerly Elpidatec) under NIH award number 1R43DA056259-01. Subaward collaborators include Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and Adapt, Inc., in Roseburg, Oregon, a not-for-profit opioid treatment program as the research site.

In coordination with OHSU and Stanford University, Sonara tested its web platform for take-home methadone and found that it was associated with improved quality of life for patients using the three-part system, which includes a tamper-evident label, a patient-facing web application to guide the patients' at-home consumption of methadone, and a clinician-facing web application to remotely and asynchronously observe patients dosing. The study found that patients prefer dosing at home with Sonara than without the use of the web application, and that providers find the use of Sonara to be feasible and safe. This SBIR award is a step further in validating these findings.

This SBIR marks the first grant funding received by the Mark Cuban-backed health-tech company.

Michael Giles, MD, Sonara's Chief Executive Officer, stated, "We are committed to increasing access to the medication that patients need in a way that best supports their recovery and is safe. We are grateful for the support from NIH for our vision for tech-enabled methadone treatment, bringing new parity to this effective treatment for fentanyl addiction."

Sonara early adopters include the following opioid treatment programs:

BayMark Health Services, Inc.

BAART, Market Street, San Francisco, CA
BAART, Norwood, Sacramento, CA
HCRC, New Bedford, MA
RSONM, Five Points, Albuquerque, NM
RSONM, Roswell, NM

CODA, Inc.

CODA, Portland, OR
CODA, Seaside, OR

Oklahoma Treatment Services, LLC

Rightway, McAlester, OK
Rightway, Roland, OK
Rightway, Tulsa, OK

For additional information, visit Sonara Health.

This research is supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number 1R43DA056259-01. The content presented in this release is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

SOURCE Sonara Health