Prospective Prediction of Lapses in Opioid Use Disorder: Protocol for a Personal Sensing Study

Abstract

Successful long-term recovery from Opioid Use Disorder requires continuous lapse risk monitoring and appropriately using and adapting recovery-supportive behaviors as lapse risk changes. Available treatments often fail to support long-term recovery by failing to account for the dynamic nature of long-term recovery. This protocol paper describes research that aims to develop a highly contextualized lapse risk prediction model that forecasts the ongoing probability of lapse. Participants will be 480 American adults in their first year of recovery from Opioid Use Disorder. Participants will report lapses and provide data relevant to lapse risk for a year with a digital therapeutic smartphone app, through both self-report and passive personal sensing methods (e.g., cellular communications, geolocation). The lapse risk prediction model will be developed using contemporary rigorous machine learning methods that optimize prediction in new data. The model this project will develop could support long-term recovery from Opioid Use Disorder, for example, by enabling just-in-time interventions within digital therapeutics. This project is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse with a funding period from August 2019 to June 2024. Full enrollment began in September 2021.