New Online Tool for Exploring Global Opioid Consumption Data

ABSTRACT

Each year for nearly two decades, the Pain & Policy Studies Group (PPSG) has received from the International Narcotics Control Board, the global monitoring body for the implementation of the United Nations international drug control conventions, consumption data for six principal opioids used to treat moderate and severe pain: fentanyl, hydromorphone, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, and pethidine. To provide these statistics to a wider audience, PPSG developed an extensive section of its Web site featuring these data in the form of global, regional, and individual country graphs. In recent years, PPSG developed and launched three new interactive Web features for exploring opioid consumption data and generating hypotheses about patterns of opioid consumption. In July 2016, PPSG announced the addition of a new tool on its Web site to explore opioid consumption data: custom consumption graphs for opioid medicines. This tool allows users to select, customize, and create charts of the opioid consumption data and download them for use in presentations or publications. PPSG encourages colleagues to use these tools to explore and study these data to inform their work to improve the accessibility and availability of these important medicines.

KEYWORDS:

• analgesics
• data
• online
• opioid
• pain management

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the International Narcotics Control Board for their continued collaboration and for providing annual updates of these important data to the PPSG. The author also thanks the United States Cancer Pain Relief Committee and the UK Department for International Development for their support of these Web site updates. The author acknowledges the contributions of Ms. Jody Moen, the former Communications Coordinator at the Pain & Policy Studies Group, and recognizes the technical experts at Bendyworks and the University of Wisconsin Department of Medicine Software Development and Informatics Service Group who developed these Web site tools.

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.