# A novel robotic wastewater analysis system to quantify opioid exposure and treatment in residential communities

> **NIH NIH R44** · BIOBOT ANALYTICS, INC. · 2020 · $212,327

## Abstract

Project Summary
This proposed Phase I/Phase II FastTrack SBIR project will lead to the demonstration of a
robust wastewater testing and analytics platform that government stakeholders can use to guide
localized actions to respond to the opioid epidemic. The opioid epidemic is the biggest drug
crisis in American history, resulting in over 130 deaths every day. Currently, stakeholders use
overdose death data to guide their opioid response strategies. However, this data is infrequently
updated, often aggregated at geographic levels which are too large to be actionable by public
health officials, and rarely provides insight into specific drug types (e.g. prescription vs. illicit
opioids, fentanyl, etc.). Novel data sources which provide localized, real-time, and drug-specific
insights are needed to inform response efforts in this rapidly changing epidemic.
Wastewater-based testing is a promising approach for measuring population-level drug
exposure, but has significant technical limitations before it can be useful to stakeholders on the
frontlines of the epidemic. Specifically, current wastewater testing approaches rely on sampling
at wastewater treatment plants, which yields city-level data at best. This represents a
heterogenous sample and is not useful to guide localized interventions.
Biobot is the first commercial wastewater testing technology designed and built to provide
actionable public health insights for municipal stakeholders tackling the opioid epidemic. Our
robotic wastewater analysis system measures opioid exposure and treatment (distinguishing
human use from discarding in the toilet), and operates at the neighborhood-level — the
geographic resolution relevant to municipal stakeholders. The premiere version of our platform
includes (1) an algorithm to select sampling sites (manholes) that represent residential
communities in a municipality; (2) a robotic sampling device that can be installed under sewer
access portals (e.g. manhole covers) to collect 24-hour composite samples; (3) a HPLC-MS/MS
method that detects a variety of urinary metabolites of prescription opioids, methadone,
buprenorphine, and naloxone; and (4) visualization in printed reports.
The goal of this Fast Track Phase I/Phase II application is to improve our platform to make it
adoptable in cities across the nation. In collaboration with leading toxicologists at Brigham and
Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, we will address technological gaps to improve
data reliability and move from detection to consistent quantification of opioid exposure and
treatment. In Phase I, we will improve and expand our HPLC-MS/MS method, develop
simulation models to optimize sample collection, and address the variability challenge of
24-hour sampling. In Phase II, we will develop data correction methods to enable integration
with all existing sewer infrastructures, validate our data against reported overdoses in a pilot
study across six Massachusetts municipalities, and build a dat...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9991436
- **Project number:** 1R44DA051106-01
- **Recipient organization:** BIOBOT ANALYTICS, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Peter R Chai
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $212,327
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-04-15 → 2021-01-14

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9991436

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9991436, A novel robotic wastewater analysis system to quantify opioid exposure and treatment in residential communities (1R44DA051106-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9991436. Licensed CC0.

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