Drug tracking software helps counties identify trends, save lives

Key Takeaways

Florida counties are using an artificial intelligence tool called Drug TRAC to track and report drug trends, with the aim of providing quicker outreach and saving lives. 

The system, which was developed by the Florida nonprofit Project Overdose, uses anonymized data from blood and urine samples collected by third-party testing firms to track use rates for roughly 80 different substances. 

The technology marks trends at the state, metro and county levels, even down to ZIP codes, according to Dr. Kendall Cortelyou. Cortelyou, director of the University of Central Florida School of Global Health Management and Informatics, works with Project Overdose and helped design Drug TRAC, which is an acronym for tracking, reporting, advocacy and coordination.

Palm Beach County and Seminole County (along with some Florida cities and metro areas, including Jacksonville) are currently piloting the software and Project Overdose is planning to roll it out nationwide by the end of this year, according to Andrae Bailey, who founded Project Overdose.

Bailey compares the technology to a hurricane radar. Like the Doppler radar’s role in tracking and predicting a storm, Drug TRAC gives local governments the ability to prepare for an influx of a particular drug, providing them with more time for outreach and education, and the ability to save lives, he said. 

“We’re not going to wave a magic wand and have the drug crisis in this country go away,” Bailey said. “… but, you cannot solve something you don’t understand. You cannot fight something you don’t see coming, so we can be always one step ahead of the drug crisis using this technology.”

If a drug trend is detected, the tool’s DrugAlert.ai can send alerts to law enforcement, public health officials and hospitals. When a new drug enters the market, it could take the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) two years to report on what Drug TRAC can identify in two weeks, Bailey said. 

“Now, it might take us a little bit longer to say, ‘What is this? How do we understand it?’” he said. “But the ability to, in real time, see the movement, and even the introduction, of a new drug? It’s wild.”

The Drug TRAC dashboard shows the co-occurrence of drugs, so if there are notable rates of drugs being used together or a rise in co-occurrence over time, that trend is flagged. 

Cortelyou calls polysubstance use (the simultaneous or sequential use of psychoactive substances) the “new wave of the drug crisis.” In 2022, nearly half of overdose deaths involved multiple drugs, and polysubstance use rates are rising.

Polysubstance use happens both intentionally and unintentionally. Someone might think they’re taking cocaine, but the supply could be adulterated with other substances, such as fentanyl or carfentanil, Cortelyou noted. 

“Polysubstance is kind of the name of the game right now,” Cortelyou said. “It’s not one thing, it’s not two things, it’s like five things. And that has a lot of implications in terms of treatment.”

Naloxone, the overdose reversal drug, is not as effective when opioids are mixed with certain drugs, such as cocaine, and not effective at all when mixed with others, such as methamphetamines. Having awareness about drugs that are often being used together in a community is beneficial for local response and outreach, Cortelyou noted. 

“Florida has made real progress, but this fight is far from over,” Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma said at a fall press conference when the pilot was introduced. “Tools like these will allow law enforcement and public health leaders to see emerging threats earlier and respond faster to save lives.”

Drug TRAC was initially rolled out in Central Florida ahead of the Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) music festival, which has historically been connected to higher rates of drug use and overdose risk. 

Carfentanil, a tranquilizer 100 times more potent than fentanyl, was detected in a range of counterfeit pills and powders throughout Orange and Seminole counties leading up to the festival, prompting Project Overdose to issue email alerts to local law enforcement, schools and community leaders, which potentially saved lives, Bailey noted. 

All of the data is anonymized, and there is no way for it to be used against anyone legally, according to Bailey. This is an essential part of the concept, Cortelyou noted. 

“A drug addiction is an illness, it’s not a moral failing …  we are helping sick people get better,” Cortelyou said. “And if we can track these trends over time, we can get a better idea of how we can intervene, how communities, how counties, can help their population get better.”

Project Overdose is working to expand Drug TRAC throughout Florida, and will present the technology to county and city leaders across the state during an informational webinar Feb. 25. 

Sonoma County, Calif. also recently launched a tool to track drug trends. The county is testing its wastewater, allowing officials to detect emerging drugs in the community before overdoses or deaths occur. 

“This gives prevention teams early, real-time insight into where risk is increasing,” Shelley Alves, the county’s Substance Use Disorder (SUD) prevention manager, wrote in a statement to County News, “so that outreach, education and harm-reduction efforts can be targeted to the areas with the greatest need, helping to prevent harm before a tragedy happens.”

The data will help Sonoma County’s behavioral health teams and case workers improve their outreach, as well as its substance use prevention planning and education, according to Will Gayowski, the county’s SUD services section manager. 

The impact of drugs, while a national issue, is felt at the local level, and counties are “hungry” for any tools that can help fight the drug crisis, Bailey said.   

“In 2026, our goal is to have this tool used all over America to save lives,” Bailey said. “… If you understand how real change happens in America … everything really happens in communities, and communities have to have strategies to fight the drug crisis.”