# Feasibility of mHealth technology-enabled service for remote observed therapy of methadone and COVID-19 screening for patients in an opioid treatment program

> **NIH NIH R41** · EMOCHA MOBILE HEALTH, INC. · 2020 · $224,940

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Methadone remains a cornerstone of treatment for opioid use disorders (OUD). Daily or frequent supervised
treatment with visual confirmation of ingestion (directly-observed therapy or “DOT”), is the standard of care for
methadone treatment in federally licensed opioid treatment programs (OTPs) in the United States. DOT
ensures adherence and mitigates the risk of medication poisonings and diversion; however, these same
policies present major challenges to infection control. The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred initiatives to
increase the number of non-observed take-home doses. Remote systems for monitoring DOT of methadone
and screening of patients for COVID-19 are desperately needed by OTPs: the emocha mobile health provides
a solution. Specific Aim #1 is to evaluate the acceptability, feasibility, and outcomes of an innovative mHealth
platform to deliver asynchronous video-based DOT services plus COVID-19 symptom screening via
smartphone for patients receiving methadone at an opioid treatment program that was implemented rapidly in
response to COVID-19. In order to provide remote supervision and recovery support for patients with extended
take-home doses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Evergreen Treatment Services (ETS) rapidly implemented
emocha’s video DOT pilot program for patients on methadone for OUD on April 16, 2020 and enrolled 38
patients within 2 weeks. We will conduct a retrospective, observational study of patients who utilized the
video-DOT/symptom screening app during this pilot. Specific Aim #2 is to evaluate usability and user
experiences of the innovative mHealth platform to deliver asynchronous video-based DOT services plus
COVID-19 symptom screening via smartphone for patients receiving methadone at an opioid treatment
program that was rapidly implemented in response to COVID-19. A usability study will be conducted with
subsets of “high-use”, “medium-use” and “low-use” patients who participated in the pilot and the five
counselors who offered the app and used the app’s web-based clinician-facing portal. The researchers will
conduct usability testing sessions to objectively measure the duration of time and number of errors associated
with completing video-DOT tasks and will obtain subjective ratings of the difficulty and helpfulness of
video-DOT tasks and features. This Phase I research will well-position the team to submit a grant for Phase II
in order to measure efficacy and further develop the model for business sustainability, which will allow for rapid
translation to other OTPs.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10156384
- **Project number:** 1R41DA053081-01
- **Recipient organization:** EMOCHA MOBILE HEALTH, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Sebastian Seiguer
- **Activity code:** R41 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $224,940
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-30 → 2022-09-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10156384

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10156384, Feasibility of mHealth technology-enabled service for remote observed therapy of methadone and COVID-19 screening for patients in an opioid treatment program (1R41DA053081-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10156384. Licensed CC0.

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