Help for the Most Helpless
As the opioid epidemic rages, more and more health professionals are treating newborns who have been exposed to drugs. “On any particular day, we can have ten to twelve babies withdrawing from narcotics,” said Tufts Medical Center Chief of Newborn Medicine Jonathan Davis, who works with eight hospitals affiliated with the Tufts University School of Medicine.
Thanks to Davis, doctors from Massachusetts General Hospital and Baystate Medical Center, and the Cambridge-based company Dimagi, there will soon be an app to help. Called NASCare and developed with $1 million in federal funding over two years, the app will guide health professionals caring for drug-exposed newborns—especially physicians at community hospitals who lack the expertise or resources to treat them—and help standardize protocols.