You have a lot of data! How can you keep your member and client information secure? What legal rules does you nonprofit need to follow when it comes to data hosting? What tools and apps won't get your in trouble?
We have four experts who will answer all your questions.
* Alejandra Brown: Introduction to privacy and overview of privacy and data residency rules that apply to BC nonprofits.
* Mack Hardy: Five practical things you can do to secure your online self. Policies, 2FA, password managers, and more.
* Damien Norris: A suite of curated tools that organizations can use to locally/securely replace the US owned cloud services in their lives.
* Kris Constable: IDVPN: a VPN for complying with justistional regulations.
In 2018, more than 70,000 people died across North America of reversible overdose death. That’s more than 200 people every day.
Meanwhile, since the early 2000’s Insite – North America’s only sanctioned supervised injection site until 2016 – has been witnessing millions of drug consumption events, reversed thousands of overdoses, and hasn’t had a single fatality.
OPS has been doing the same here in Vancouver since late 2016. At first illegally, then with permission and now replicated nearly 100 times across the country. It’s operated by people with lived experience of drug use, serves people nearly 1000 times a day and has reversed thousands of overdoses. Again, no fatalities.
In fact, there hasn’t been a single known fatality at any supervised consumption space anywhere in the world.
This isn’t rocket science, it’s a fairly simple insight: if you are alone when you overdose, your chances of being found, of being found by someone who can either help, or who is comfortable calling for help, are really, really slim.
It’s pretty much as simple to reverse an overdose as it is to lift someone’s face out of 6 inches of water – but if there’s no-one there...
But people use alone for all sorts of reasons – and just like you or me texting while we drive, if you’ve done it 1,000’s of time without incident, you’re not going to stop just because you know the statistics are alarming.
So our idea was simple: use technology to allow people to still be physically alone, to be anonymous as far as far as identity and location are concerned, for so long as they are at risk of overdose.
That way, they have a tether to someone who can remotely ensure they’re okay, and, if they become not okay, their location is revealed, and their supporter can help them, or send appropriate help.
Our framework is that we first connect the person at risk, via technology.
Then their situation is assessed, either by technology, a person, or a combination.
And if necessary, a physical response is put in motion. To finalise the assesment, and, if there is in fact an overdose happening, reverse the overdose.
So what does this actually look like.
Our buttons are our most advanced product in terms of distribution: they’re currently in one building here in Vancouver, serving about 30 people, and in the next 4 months we’re rolling out to another 5 buildings, a total of about 200 people.
In the short time they’ve been operational, we’ve seen 15 overdose reversals through the buttons.
You push a button. Staff get a text message with the room location. They go to the room. They respond to the situation.
And what’s not on here, is they then send a message indicating what it was that they responded to, or they say “other” if the tenant didn’t disclose or asked them not to.
The app is pretty much the same: you connect through your phone to an actual person – remember our framework is physical supervised consumption sites, we’re trying not to digitise too much in case we break whatever magic force makes those spaces works – and you stay on the phone until you’re no longer at risk of overdose.
Once you’re done, you sign off. If you become unresponsive, the Supporter triggers an overdose alert and, after 10 seconds, your location is revealed to the Supporter who can then send help.
A number of fatal overdoses have happened in public washrooms, and a larger number of non-fatal overdoses have happened in specific washrooms around the country.
This solution involves a series of non-contact sensors that send alerts to a responsible person within that physical space, they respond by checking on the bathroom when the system assesses an increased risk of overdose, and then act accordingly.
Community overdose response is a way of both increasing the timeliness of overdose response and allowing non-official response to be made more efficient for those who do not wish to involve EMS.
This tool activates friends and family, volunteer responders, and integrates with both existing 911 services and new teams that are popping up to respond specifically to overdose.
These tools are all at various stages of development, but even once they’re fully distributed we won’t be reaching everyone with these tools.
I was in the alley behind OPS on Friday and saw EMS working on someone who’d overdosed for nearly 30 minutes. We don’t yet know what might work for those that won’t access supervised consumption sites, or that have no, or inconsistent access to technology.
Please check us out and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, suggestions, or want to find out how to get involved.