Toxicology Test Results for Public Health Surveillance of the Opioid Epidemic: Retrospective Analysis

Background Addressing the opioid epidemic requires timely insights into population-level factors, such as trends in prevalence of legal and illegal substances, overdoses, and deaths. Objective This study aimed to examine whether toxicology test results of living individuals from a variety of sources could be useful in surveilling the opioid epidemic. Methods A retrospective analysis standardized, merged, and linked toxicology results from 24 laboratories in Marion County, Indiana, United States, from September 1, 2018, to August 31, 2019. The data set consisted of 33,787 Marion County residents and their 746,681 results. We related the data to general Marion County demographics and compared alerts generated by toxicology results to opioid overdose–related emergency department visits. Nineteen domain experts helped prototype analytical visualizations. Main outcome measures included test positivity in the county and by ZIP code; selected demographics of individuals with toxicology results; and correlation of toxicology results with opioid overdose–related emergency department visits. Results Four percent of Marion County residents had at least 1 toxicology result. Test positivity rates ranged from 3% to 19% across ZIP codes. Males were underrepresented in the data set. Age distribution resembled that of Marion County. Alerts for opioid toxicology results were not correlated with opioid overdose–related emergency department visits. Conclusions Analyzing toxicology results at scale was impeded by varying data formats, completeness, and representativeness; changes in data feeds; and patient matching difficulties. In this study, toxicology results did not predict spikes in opioid overdoses. Larger, more rigorous and well-controlled studies are needed to assess the utility of toxicology tests in predicting opioid overdose spikes.