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Alphabet’s Verily is building a high-tech rehab campus to combat opioid addiction

Verily, Alphabet’s life science division, is building a tech-focused rehab campus in Dayton, Ohio to combat the opioid crisis.

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Verily will join two health networks, Kettering Health Network and Premier Health, to create a nonprofit named OneFifteen. Alexandria Real Estate Equities will design and develop the campus, which will offer both inpatient and outpatient services.

There is no single solution to treating substance abuse, with strategies spanning from intensive rehabilitation programs to drop-in meetings. Verily hopes to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in helping people get and stay sober.

“We’re really on this quest to fundamentally transform behavioral health,” Danielle Schlosser, senior clinical scientist of behavioral health at Verily, said in an interview. “I think anybody working in this field should be excited because we’re going to see change with the level of investment going into this initiative.”

Initially, Verily will focus on understanding what works in the clinic and then track patient behavior when they get out to see what sticks, Schlosser said. Verily will use a “variety of means” to track what works, she said, adding that patients would have to consent to being monitored.

“You could imagine something as simple as people answering a survey or more sophisticated technology to gain insight of who that person is, what they’re encountering in their environment,” she said.

Clinical care will be provided by an operating partner of OneFifteen, Samaritan Behavioral Health, Inc., a subsidiary of Premier Health. Verily will integrate its technology into the facility to analyze and measure how effective interventions are.

OneFifteen will begin seeing individuals for inpatient and outpatient care in the spring of 2019. The full campus is expected to be completed in 2020.

Over time, One Fifteen wants to change how addiction is treated and how providers are paid, OneFifteen CEO Marti Taylor said in an interview. Verily and its partners will fund OneFifteen.

“Because we will have facilities, an entire ecosystem and data, we’ll be able to take a more holistic understanding of a person’s health both inside and outside as we follow them long-term,” Taylor said. “It’s pretty unique being able to understand their care and advance evidence-based treatment.”

CNBC.com