The University of Wisconsin announced recently that it received a $3.42 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop an app to prevent opioid relapses.

According to a release, the goal of the project is to develop and deliver models to forecast the probability of opioid and other drug use among people trying to abstain from drugs while in recovery. School of Journalism and Mass Communication Professor Dhavan Shah and Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology John Curtin are leading the project.

“Relapse can happen early in recovery for alcohol and substance use disorders, but it can also happen months, and even years, after someone quits,” Curtin said in a statement. “One of the biggest challenges that people with alcohol and substance use disorders have is to continually monitor their recovery and look out for risks for relapse, essentially for the rest of their lives.”

Shaj and Curtin will study approximately 500 participants who are abstaining from drug use while in recovery over the course of 12 months.

No timeline was provided for the completion of the app.

Photo by Bryce Richter / UW-Madison