The first MySafe machine is strategically located right next door to the OPS safe consumption site, giving people that option if they wish to consume their hydromorphone there. Having an easily obtainable, “daily dose of medication that I know isn’t going to kill me” has “changed my life.” It’s run by community-level volunteers at the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS), which also operates a safe consumption site. Tyndall has been the prescribing physician for the MySafe pilot installation. Initially serving 14 registered patients, the machine has dispensed 3,500 doses to date.ĭr. The first pilot machine, located in Vancouver’s overdose-hit Downtown East Side, began dispensing safe supply in December 2019. Participants have their prescriptions dispensed by a pharmacist who follows all Health Canada and provincial regulatory requirements. In British Columbia, the adoption of MySafe did not require any regulatory change. In addition to its main purpose of saving lives, another reason for MySafe’s starting with a highly restricted opioid, rather than another form of safe supply, was to demonstrate the feasibility -and, it is hoped, scalability - of such an approach. The technology is EPCS-compliant-a certification standard set by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for electronic prescriptions of controlled substances. It verifies a patient who has been prescribed hydromorphone through Fujitsu PalmSecure, a biometric authentication system that reads the palm’s internal vein pattern (additional security includes a CCTV camera). Dispension’s flagship product, the verified identity dispenser (VID) is like an ATM for medication. Yet most doctors still lack the will and courage to prescribe safe supply.ĭetermined to make his novel idea work, Tyndall teamed up with Dispension, a life sciences tech startup. In the case of opioids, the document calls for up to 14 8mg tablets of hydromorphone within a 24-hour period (and/or M-Eslon, a morphine sulfate), with dosages depending on individual factors including whether a patient is also receiving opioid agonist therapy. In March, the British Columbia Centre for Substance Use (BCCSU) released guidelines encouraging physicians to provide a safe supply for various drugs. Safe supply is a well evidenced way to prevent deaths. “This should not be seen as just an extension of treatment to people.” “This is a public health approach to a poisoning epidemic,” he said back in 2018. His idea was to make the opioid hydromorphone (Dilaudid) available to people who use opioids -in general, but ultimately through “vending machines” in a project called MySafe. Tyndall saw the need to provide a safe supply of drugs to people, removing the possibility of adulteration, in a way that supported drug-user autonomy. Mark Tyndall -helpful for any community impacted by poverty and drug-related problems, but more relevant than ever amid COVID-19 social distancing-represents an important step forward. Something had to change, and an innovation pioneered by Dr. The nationwide overdose crisis killed about 11 Canadians a day between January 2016 and September 2019. Fentanyl was in town, contributing to thousands of deaths. Due to the drastic increase in opioid – involved overdoses, British Columbia declared a public health emergency in 2016.
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