Neil Devadasan, Lead Systems Engineer, and Karen Comer, Director, Collaborative Research and Community Health Informatics, are presenting Polis’ ongoing work on the Chemical Surveillance System for the Synthetic Drug Crisis on Oct. 23 during the IUPUI School of Informatics and Computing’ BioHealth Informatics Department colloquium. 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 the School of Informatics and Computing (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 enable public expression for community education.