U-of-I CD-Rom helps doctors spot drug abuse

Researchers at the University of Iowa have won a 95-thousand dollar grant to develop a CD-ROM to help health care professionals from doctors to dentists to detect drug and alcohol abuse in their patients. Anne Helene (huh-LANE) Skinstad is the project’s principal investigator.Skinstad is coordinator of the U-of-I’s Substance Abuse Counseling Program. She says it sometimes takes a specially-trained eye to spot problems with substance abuse.She hopes to have the CD-ROM ready for pilot testing in Iowa and in South Dakota within a year.CD-ROMs can become quickly outdated, but Skinstad says the Internet ties with this disc will enable users to have access to the latest information.