On Dec. 11, Polis colleagues Karen Comer, Director of Collaborative Research and Community Health Informatics, and Neil Devadasan, Lead Systems Engineer and School of Informatics and Computing (SoIC) graduate students will present the Chemical Surveillance System project as part of the School of Informatics & Computing BioHealth Informatics Colloquia.

The Chemical Surveillance System (CSS) for the Synthetic Drug Crisis is a collaborative project with the IUPUI Department of Chemistry, Indiana Poison Center, IU School of Medicine, and Polis Center at SoIC to develop
a system for synthetic drug surveillance in emergency departments. Using novel drug detection technology developed at IUPUI, the system will identify in near real-time the specific drug compounds causing ED
visits and integrate this information with clinical data on the resulting overdose symptoms and outcomes. Polis is leading database design and the development of an associated dashboard to highlight trends and spatial patterns. The dashboard will be available to public health departments, emergency responders, law enforcement, and state legislators and also have a public expression for community education.