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Principal Investigator: Sarah Emily Snider
Organization: BEAM DIAGNOSTICS, INC.
Fiscal Year: 2024
Award: $935,721
Funding agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse
PROJECT SUMMARY
Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a major contributor to excessive disability, morbidity, and mortality in the United
States. Currently, almost 10 million Americans misuse opioid substances and 2.7 million Americans suffer from
OUD. In the past year alone, U.S. opioid overdose deaths have increased by nearly 30%, resulting in an annual
mortality rate of >100,000, akin to a death every 5 minutes. Given the scope of the U.S. opioid epidemic, there
is an essential need for proactive, routine, evidence-based OUD screening by an individual’s prescribing primary
care provider or mental health clinicians. However, screening for opioid misuse is underperformed, laborious,
and is susceptible to demand characteristics and concerns about stigmatizing the patient. To combat these
issues, BEAM Diagnostics, Inc. developed Beacon-OUD, a commercializable digital screening tool for OUD. The
tool is based on the theoretical behavioral framework of reinforcer pathology, a widely adopted behavioral
economic approach to addictive behavior. Beacon-OUD is: (1) quick and easy-to-deliver to patients, with
automated, standardized scoring to reduce time barriers; (2) accessible, easy-to-comprehend and self-
administer; (3) non-stigmatizing and assesses risk without disclosing sensitive information; (4) oriented to current
and future, not past, OUD behavior; and 5) interoperable and integrated with a patient’s medical record to
improve the standards for OUD assessment and patient-centered care. In Phase I of this project, we conducted
a clinical study, validating Beacon-OUD as demonstrating robust predictive accuracy of opioid misuse and
receiving positive reports of feasibility and acceptability from providers. The goal of this Phase II SBIR is to
extend Beacon-OUD’s development into a fully realized commercial product, both as a stand-alone tool and as
an integrated tool within an electronic medical record (EMR) system at a large multi-site healthcare system
serving approximately 1M outpatients per year. Aim 1 will optimize the user-experience and accessibility of
Beacon-OUD as a product, produce comprehensive clinical reference materials, and complete a Spanish-
language translation. Aim 2 will integrate Beacon-OUD into EPIC, a widely used electronic medical record
system within a health system partner to improve usability, workflow capabilities, and record-keeping of opioid
misuse directly in a patient’s medical chart. In addition, Aim 2 will launch education and implementation initiatives
to promote Beacon-OUD’s use primary care. Finally, BEAM will complete an Exploratory Aim seeking to validate
and expand Beacon-OUD’s clinical utility as a measurement-based care tool for OUD treatment prognosis. At
the conclusion of this Phase II project, BEAM will have brought Beacon-OUD to market as a digital assessment
for OUD measurement, both as a stand-alone product and an EMR-integrated version.
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