Funding innovation in addiction services
Realworks is a non-profit bringing together technologists and addiction services providers
Realworks is a provider-led fund focused on innovation in addiction treatment.
The fund invests in and manages pilots of new technologies that have the potential for immediate impact as well as scale at a national level - using the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region as the “lab” for figuring out what works.
We believe today’s best tech tools should be used on the frontlines of addiction services.
Realworks has announced 3 pilots to date with more to come.
Pilots announced to date:
Opioid Use Disorder patients have high no-show rates due to stated lack of access to transport.
We were the first Behavioral Health use case for the UberHealth tool and provided transportation to MAT patients to test impact on reducing no-show rates. Completed phase 1(3 pilot sites, Sept 2018 - Jan 2019); active conversations on path forward for funded Phase For more details and insights, check out what we learned in phase 1 here.
Tools to manage and optimize peer support relationships do not exist.
We built an app for current and potential peer supports in the region to access resources that support maturation and advancement of the peer supporter role in the recovery journey. Partnered with Inquisit Health to create the Peerstrong app. Impact and results are documented here.
Contingency Management has been shown to be extremely effective in initially increasing engagement in addiction treatment for patients with substance use disorder, but is not implemented widely.
We are in the process of running and testing the efficacy of a 6 month mobile-based CM treatment of SUD patients with a major addiction treatment provider in Cincinnati, Ohio. We are partnering with Dynamicare to deliver mobile-based Contingency management. Learn more here.
Realworks will continue to launch additional pilots every 1-2 months. Future pilots will focus on priorities related to better clinically integrated tools, data maturity across the treatment pathway and tech-enabled coordination of wrap around supports.