# Unintended Prolonged Opioid Use

> **NIH NIH U01** · MAYO CLINIC ROCHESTER · 2020 · $1,411,174

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Misuse of prescription opioids remains a public health crisis. Appropriate short-term use of these medications
in opioid-naïve patients is indicated in select health care settings, but intentional short-term use is emerging as
a previously under-recognized segue to unintended prolonged opioid use (UPOU). Clinical strategies aimed at
preventing UPOU in health care settings are lacking due, in part, to absence of information about how this
poorly-understood clinical phenomenon develops.
Investigators at Mayo Clinic recently organized a group of thought leaders to develop a conceptual framework
to explain UPOU. Such a framework is essential both to guide the study of this problem and to identify potential
targets for interventions to reduce UPOU. The framework is comprised of three domains, including (1) patient
characteristics; (2) practice environment characteristics; and (3) opioid prescriber characteristics that interact to
either facilitate or impede UPOU. Within each domain, potential factors, drawn from the relevant literature,
moderate or mediate the influence of each domain. However, much of the information needed to evaluate this
framework does not currently exist. The widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHR) provides
unique potential opportunities for translational research, including identifying subjects eligible for study
participation and serving as a data sources for retrospective or prospective studies. However, interoperability
between EHRs poses a considerable challenge to taking advantage of these opportunities.
Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine recently launched Hugo, a secure mobile personal health
(mHealth) platform that enables patients to access their information from multiple EHRs and other healthcare
information sources, including commercial pharmacy records. The Hugo platform has tremendous potential to
facilitate clinical research, especially research conducted across multiple centers – as information from diverse
source systems at each institution can be easily integrated into a common dataset.
In this application, four CTSA hubs (Mayo Clinic, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, and Yale) will
explore the Hugo platform's potential to facilitate clinical research, with the UPOU study as a use case. We will
use the Hugo platform to identify incident cases of UPOU and prospectively recruit patients and opioid
prescribers for assessments, as well as to evaluate the proposed conceptual framework using structural
equation models. At this study's conclusion, we will have successfully deployed a highly innovative mHealth
platform across multiple centers and this platform will be immediately available for widespread dissemination
across the entire CTSA consortium and other clinical research sites. The information gained about UPOU will
significantly advance core knowledge about this poorly understood clinical phenomenon. This newly acquired
information will be used design, test,...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9891122
- **Project number:** 5U01TR002743-02
- **Recipient organization:** MAYO CLINIC ROCHESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** W. Michael Hooten
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1,411,174
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-03-15 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9891122

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9891122, Unintended Prolonged Opioid Use (5U01TR002743-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9891122. Licensed CC0.

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