Transforming Opioid Care: Robotic Automation Empowering Nurses to Save Lives

August 21, 2025
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WRITTEN BY
August 21, 2025

Talia Weis

ISBX has been deeply root­ed in the health­care indus­try since 2009, with a focus on address­ing real-world issues through our health­care soft­ware devel­op­ment that is help­ing to pow­er inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies. A key area of this is our con­tri­bu­tion to the fight against the opi­oid epi­dem­ic along­side Opio and their ZING® product. 
The Opioid Crisis & Healthcare Challenges
The opi­oid cri­sis has long stood as a wide­spread pub­lic health emer­gency, cast­ing a dark shad­ow across com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies nation­wide. The sheer scale of the prob­lem is stag­ger­ing, the num­ber of opi­oid over­dose deaths in 2025 stands 7 times high­er than in 1999. This is specif­i­cal­ly due to the increased pres­ence of syn­thet­ic opi­oids like fen­tanyl tak­ing more than 150 lives dai­ly across Amer­i­ca (CDC). 
Fen­tanyl is the lead­ing cause of death in Amer­i­cans aged 18–45. Methadone treat­ment is the most effec­tive treat­ment for fen­tanyl addic­tion and is only avail­able at Opi­oid Treat­ment Pro­grams (OTPs). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only 1 in 5 coun­ties in the U.S. have an OTP, mak­ing life-sav­ing treat­ment inac­ces­si­ble to many peo­ple. His­tor­i­cal­ly, OTPs have oper­at­ed as high­ly labor-inten­sive envi­ron­ments, with methadone dose assem­bly rely­ing main­ly on man­u­al process­es: metic­u­lous adjust­ments includ­ing pre­cise mea­sur­ing, bot­tling, cap­ping, foil seal­ing, and label­ing for each indi­vid­ual dose. This tra­di­tion­al method comes with sev­er­al crit­i­cal risks: 
Dos­ing Errors:
Man­u­al process­es are inher­ent­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to human error, which giv­en methadone’s poten­cy can lead to severe consequences.
Man­u­al Labor
: Nurs­es and phar­ma­cists are respon­si­ble for man­u­al­ly assem­bling every dose of liq­uid methadone. With patients receiv­ing up to 55 indi­vid­ual bot­tles per month, clin­ics often pre­pare hundreds—even thousands—of dos­es each day. This process is not only time-con­sum­ing and repet­i­tive but also increas­es the risk of overuse injuries such as carpal tun­nel. It’s a task far removed from the rea­sons most nurs­es entered the profession.
Oper­a­tional Inef­fi­cien­cy and Staff Burnout:
Man­u­al process­es are slow and time con­sum­ing, which lim­its patient through­put and oper­a­tional capac­i­ty with­in OTPs. This forces the real­lo­ca­tion of nurs­es time, effort, and resources away from direct inter­per­son­al care. Over 40% of nurs­es intend to leave the pro­fes­sion by 2027 with stress, burnout, and low­ered qual­i­ty of life as dri­ving fac­tors (Nation­al Coun­cil of State Boards of Nursing). 
This depen­dence on man­u­al tasks chips away at the oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­nec­tion between nurs­es and patients, lead­ing to these sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges in retain­ing health­care pro­fes­sion­als. As Karen Reese of Man Alive Clin­ic pow­er­ful­ly illus­trates, “The turnover over the years that I’ve seen has been sig­nif­i­cant, and I tru­ly under­stood when they (nurs­es) hand­ed in their res­ig­na­tion because I knew they want­ed to return to what they want­ed to do: to talk to patients, to advise them, to lis­ten and hold space with them… they just can’t do that when all they’re doing is the man­u­al labor.”
Finding Solutions in Automation
In a new era of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, Opio has intro­duced ZING®: the first robot auto­mat­ed methadone dose assem­bly sys­tem. This ground­break­ing tech­nol­o­gy oper­ates four times faster than tra­di­tion­al man­u­al dos­ing, min­i­miz­ing the risk of human error with height­ened accu­ra­cy. ZING® frees nurs­es from tedious and monot­o­nous tasks, allow­ing them to ded­i­cate their time to direct care. Nurse Lanea, also of Man Alive Clin­ic, details her expe­ri­ence: “Now that we have our ZING® machine, what used to take us at least a full day can be done in a cou­ple of hours… and the machine does it while we con­tin­ue to work at the front… it’s just a won­der­ful thing because I am now able to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in all my clients’ lives.” 
Engineering the Future 
ZING® rep­re­sents a pio­neer­ing effort to intro­duce mod­ern solu­tions to a his­tor­i­cal­ly over­looked area of health­care. This posi­tions Opio, and by exten­sion it’s devel­op­ment part­ners, not mere­ly as prod­uct devel­op­ers but as lead­ers with a mis­sion to address a gap­ing tech­no­log­i­cal void in health­care. This mis­sion, how­ev­er, demand­ed robust soft­ware engi­neer­ing and seam­less inte­gra­tion exper­tise. Enter ISBX, the key part­ner in devel­op­ing the soft­ware pow­er­ing the ZING® sys­tem via:
Devel­op­ing the Intu­itive Admin­is­tra­tion Por­tal:
This involved cre­at­ing a com­pre­hen­sive and user-friend­ly admin­is­tra­tive por­tal for the ZING® sys­tem, enabling health­care providers to man­age oper­a­tions, effec­tive­ly mon­i­tor sys­tem per­for­mance, and main­tain con­trol over the robot­ic dis­pens­ing process.
Seam­less Elec­tron­ic Med­ical Record (EMR) Inte­gra­tion with Metha­soft:
A crit­i­cal step was dis­cov­er­ing how to inte­grate ZING® with Metha­soft, the lead­ing EMR for Opi­oid Treat­ment Pro­grams (OTPs). This ensures accu­rate record-keep­ing, patient data, inven­to­ry man­age­ment, and inter­op­er­a­ble data sharing.
Soft­ware Devel­op­ment:
Exten­sive devel­op­ment sup­port was need­ed to enhance the over­all func­tion­al­i­ty and per­for­mance of  ZING®. By mod­u­lar­iz­ing code and opti­miz­ing sys­tem oper­a­tions in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Opio engi­neers, the team ensured long-term effi­cien­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty. Their exper­tise trans­formed the robot­ic hard­ware into a ful­ly inte­grat­ed, clin­i­cal­ly com­pli­ant system.
The suc­cess of Opio’s ZING® sys­tem is a tes­ta­ment to the poten­tial of strate­gic part­ner­ships that work to turn dreams into real­i­ty through tech­nol­o­gy. ISBX’s sup­port serves as a pow­er­ful case study of the team’s abil­i­ty. Our pas­sion is to tack­le com­plex chal­lenges with cut­ting-edge soft­ware to cre­ate rev­o­lu­tion­ary and reli­able health­care solutions. 
As Kay­la Casale, a soft­ware engi­neer at ISBX, remarked, “What’s tru­ly pow­er­ful is hear­ing the per­son­al tes­ti­monies from nurs­es and clin­i­cians – sto­ries about how our sys­tem is direct­ly solv­ing the very real chal­lenges they encounter every­day.” In the tire­less fight against the opi­oid epi­dem­ic, this col­lab­o­ra­tion stands as a bea­con of inno­va­tion. It paves a path toward a health­care future where tech­nol­o­gy lib­er­ates, rather than lim­its, the pro­found human con­nec­tion essen­tial to recovery.
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