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New app for substance abuse treatment developed in San Antonio

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UT Health San Antonio is studying an app that it hopes will improve outcomes for people being treated for substance use disorders. The app is called KIOS, and Dr. Jennifer Sharpe Potter described it as a prescription digital therapeutic.

“Which is a long way of saying this could be something that's essentially prescribed by a doctor,” she said.

Potter is the founding director of UT Health San Antonio’s Be Well Institute on Substance Use and Related Disorders, which includes Be Well Texas.

“The app is intended to help you stay in treatment, help you navigate if there are issues or complexities in how you're feeling. It helps with mood and other issues like that,” she explained.

This app is a home-grown product, Potter added.

“This is something that was developed here locally in San Antonio,” she said. “We're testing it here in San Antonio at the clinic and, depending on the results, will be able to introduce that in the marketplace."

Potter is recruiting people locally to participate in a clinical trial. They will use the app as part of their treatment for substance use disorder.

“If it works and then be able to submit to the FDA that this is something that a health care provider could prescribe,” she said.

Learn more about the clinical trial, including how to enroll, here.

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Bonnie Petrie is a proud new member of the news team at WUWM. She is a reporter who - over her twenty year career - has been honored by both the Texas an New York Associated Press Broadcasters, as well as the Radio, Television and Digital News Association, for her reporting, anchoring, special series production and use of sound.