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As part of the agency’s ongoing commitment to address the epidemic of opioid misuse and abuse, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today launched an innovation challenge to spur the development of medical devices, including digital health technologies and diagnostic tests that could provide novel solutions to detecting, treating and preventing addiction, addressing diversion and treating pain.

National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., announced the launch of the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative, an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. Toward this effort, NIH is nearly doubling funding for research on opioid misuse/addiction and pain from approximately $600 million in fiscal year 2016 to $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2018, made possible from a funding boost by Congress. One of the efforts will be to pursue public-private partnerships to develop new non-addictive pain medicines.

A joint US Food and Drug Administration advisory committee has voted against approving a novel drug for acute pain that combines hydrocodone, acetaminophen, and promethazine.

Following the Feb. 16 deadline for submitting new legislation to be considered for enactment this year, CLSA expects to see more than a dozen bills related to opioids when the dust settles. Though most of those bills dealt with monitoring prescriptions and other largely administrative issues for prescribers, one such recently introduced bill has CLSA concerned.

Life expectancy in the U.S. fell for the second year in a row in 2016, nudged down again by a surge in fatal opioid overdoses, federal officials report Thursday.