A Florida nonprofit with a mission to combat the state’s overdose epidemic is introducing an artificial intelligence tool that can alert communities about what potentially deadly drugs people are using in real time.
Project Overdose’s new machine-learning technology, called Drug TRAC, an acronym for tracking, reporting, advocacy and coordination, is being beta-tested in Palm Beach County and Central Florida with plans to roll out statewide in early 2026, Andrae Bailey, founder of the nonprofit, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Largely using urine drug-testing lab results, the system contains data from tens of thousands of tests per month that show the prevalence and trends of specific types of drugs statewide and at local levels. The goal is to help community leaders and authorities prevent deaths and appropriately respond to the drugs that are actively a threat in their area.
If a particular trend or anomaly is detected, the tool’s DrugAlert.ai system can send alerts to law enforcement, public health officials, hospitals and other groups by ZIP code, county and metro area, according to a report from the nonprofit.
The first alert was issued by email to all law enforcement, some schools and other community leaders in Central Florida before the EDC Orlando music festival in November, where illicit drug use is common, after detecting the region as one to see a recent increase in rates of carfentanil, a fentanyl analog 100 times stronger than fentanyl, Bailey said. He anticipates a similar alert will likely be generated ahead of Ultra Music Festival in Miami in early 2026.
The Florida Sheriffs Association has publicly shared support for the tool.
Bailey compared the tool to the innovativeness of technology to predict hurricanes and their paths.
“Now we can see a storm coming from far away,” Bailey said. “We can’t stop the storm, but we can absolutely prepare.”
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A launch event with a live demonstration was hosted at a forum at Palm Beach State College’s campus in Lake Worth Beach in the fall. In 2026, Project Overdose aims to expand the tool across the state, create a regional dashboard for public use and have a “national alert model” that other states could use, the nonprofit’s report says.
Positive tests taken at major drug testing companies, which Bailey said the nonprofit has partnered with, that become part of the tool’s data system do not include anyone’s name but includes a person’s neighborhood, age, any medical conditions and oftentimes information about someone’s socioeconomic status. The results are from those taking the tests for a variety of reasons, like for jobs or if someone is on a drug or alcohol program, he said.
“You can’t lie on a drug test … The accuracy of the data is pretty much perfect,” Bailey said. “So even though there might only be tens of thousands of tests in the system, the statistical accuracy of that and the amount of information you get per piece of data is overwhelming.”
One impetus for the tool is to maintain regularly updated data without waiting often more than a year for statewide, government reports on drug trends and overdose deaths, said Kendall Cortelyou, a University of Central Florida professor who works with Project Overdose and helped design Drug TRAC.
The latest annual report from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission on drugs identified during autopsies was published in October 2025 and reviews deaths from 2024. The commission’s annual report for 2023 deaths was published in November 2024.
Throughout the state, the total number of drug-related deaths again decreased in 2024 by about 14 percent or about 2,000 less deaths than in 2023, the Medical Examiners Commission’s October report shows.
While deaths caused by fentanyl in 2024 declined by 35 percent compared to 2023, it is still the drug that causes the most deaths, the data shows. In the South Florida region, a total of 732 people died from fentanyl in 2024.
The time lag in verifying and publishing statewide data, like the Medical Examiners Commission report, often means community leaders are trying to find solutions well after the fact, when trends may have shifted, Cortelyou said.
Cortelyou during a live demonstration presented to the Sun Sentinel showed some of the different metrics the system maintains based on the lab test results, including month-to-month trends for about 90 different drugs currently being tracked, yearly positivity rates, positivity rates by county and co-positivity rates among multiple types of drugs. Data can be drilled down by county, age range, gender and insurance payer groups.
When Cortelyou first began working with Project Overdose, she would oftentimes hear from different communities: “This is not a problem in my county,” she said.
“We didn’t have the real time data to say, ‘Yes, it is.’ This is a problem in every county. It was so difficult to convince people it was a problem, and now we have data that actually shows there is, in fact, a problem,” she said.