{"id":1609,"date":"2025-07-01T19:18:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2025-07-01T19:19:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:19:42","slug":"are-addiction-treatment-services-ready-for-big-data-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/2025\/07\/01\/are-addiction-treatment-services-ready-for-big-data-and-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Are addiction treatment services ready for big data and AI?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Are Treatment Services Ready for the Use of Big Data Analytics and AI in Managing Opioid Use Disorder?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this viewpoint, we explore the use of big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) and discuss important challenges to their ethical, effective, and equitable use within opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Applying our collective experiences as OUD policy and treatment experts, we discuss 8 key challenges that OUD treatment services must contend with to make the most of these rapidly evolving technologies: data and algorithmic transparency, clinical validation, new practitioner-technology interfaces, capturing data relevant to improving patient care, understanding and responding to algorithmic outputs, obtaining informed patient consent, navigating mistrust, and addressing digital exclusion and bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through this paper, we aimed to critically engage clinicians and policy makers on important ethical considerations, clinical implications, and implementation challenges involved in big data analytics and AI deployment in OUD treatment settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"930\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2025\/07\/image-930x1024.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1610\" srcset=\"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2025\/07\/image-930x1024.png 930w, https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2025\/07\/image-273x300.png 273w, https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2025\/07\/image-768x846.png 768w, https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2025\/07\/image.png 1090w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 930px) 100vw, 930px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) applications for opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment services.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Output<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Amer M,\u00a0Gittins R,\u00a0Millana AM,\u00a0Scheibein F,\u00a0Ferri M,\u00a0Tofighi B,\u00a0Sullivan F,\u00a0Handley M,\u00a0Ghosh M,\u00a0<strong>Baldacchino A,\u00a0Tay Wee Teck J<\/strong><br>Are Treatment Services Ready for the Use of Big Data Analytics and AI in Managing Opioid Use Disorder? <em>J Med Internet Res <\/em>2025;27:e58723 doi:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2196\/58723\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">10.2196\/58723<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This project identified eight key challenges to the ethical and effective use of big data and AI in opioid use disorder treatment, including transparency, clinical validation, consent, trust, and digital bias. It calls on clinicians and policymakers to critically engage with these technologies to ensure equitable and meaningful implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5884,"featured_media":1611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-imp_sci_systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5884"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/digitas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}