SPONSORED RESEARCH: The Vira Platform: A Contextually Triggered Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention for Opioid Use Disorder
September 10, 2026
Pictured Above: Kelli Scott, PhD
Read a Q&A Below:
Kelli Scott, PhD at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine Department of Medical Social Sciences recently won a grant titled, “The Vira Platform: A Contextually Triggered Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention for Opioid Use Disorder,” from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This award is based at Rhode Island Hospital with Dr. Susan Ramsey and Dr. Nicholas Allen as Principal Investigators.
What are the aims of the project?
This is a UG3 award based at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, that aims to adapt, refine, and test the Vira Healthcare platform, a digital behavior change technology that was initially developed as a tool to monitor and provide just-in-time intervention for management of mental health symptoms. The platform will be adapted to support individuals receiving treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) and will subsequently be tested in both an initial pilot feasibility trial and then a pragmatic randomized controlled trial (the UH3 phase of the study) with OUD patients to evaluate clinical effectiveness with a specific focus on enhancing treatment retention.
What are your next steps?
As a consultant on this project, I will support the research team at Rhode Island Hospital in utilizing best practices from implementation science to guide the design and adaptation of the Vira platform to enhance the likelihood that it can be adopted at scale if effective.
What do you hope will come out of this funded research?
If effective, the Vira platform will offer a digital health technology that is tailored to the needs of individuals with OUD and can serve to enhance retention in treatment as well as offer an at-home solution for ongoing monitoring and management of symptoms. Treatment retention is a major challenge in OUD care, therefore offering a solution that can support patients in between treatment appointments may enhance care engagement and support patients in maintaining their recovery.