“The government has been trying to apply artificial intelligence to combat the opioid crisis, with projects like real-time mapping of the signs of illegal drug use, and prescription monitoring programs to identify high rates of opioid prescriptions and incidents of “doctor shopping” for the drugs.
“The Department of Homeland Security wants to add innovative technologies to another element of the battle, looking for automated methods of accurately detecting opioids in parcel packages, which has become a mounting problem…”
“The cross-agency effort, called the Opioid Detection Challenge, is looking for “novel, automated, nonintrusive, user-friendly and well-developed plans for tools and technologies that have the potential to quickly and accurately detect opioids in parcels, without disrupting the flow of mail,” with $1.55 million in prize money available, according to its website.” Read the full article here.
Source: DHS Challenges AI Developers to Combat Opioid Crisis – March 16, 2019. MeriTalk.
