Bad Batch App Notifies Community of Heroin Overdoses (Baltimore Magazine)

A local tech entrepreneur is trying to curb the massive spike in deaths related to the opioid epidemic one text at a time.

The Bad Batch Alert app is made for heroin addicts and their loved ones and essentially notifies them of any bad batches of opioids in the area. When an abnormal amount of overdoses in a neighborhood is detected, a text is sent out alerting users that a bad batch is in the area.

“It’s similar to an Amber Alert,” says creator Mike LeGrand, who started up Code In Schools in order to spread computer science education around Baltimore.

With the help of six teens and one mentor from that program, they started up Bad Batch Alert in October. He says, “Loved ones might use it, because they often care more about the people in the grips of addiction, than the people themselves do.”

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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