New Resource: Johns Hopkins University Helps Launch Digital Trove of Opioid Industry Documents

From Johns Hopkins University:

The University of California, San Francisco and Johns Hopkins University today announced the launch of the Opioid Industry Documents Archive, a digital repository of publicly disclosed documents from recent judgments, settlements, and ongoing lawsuits concerning the opioid crisis. The documents come from government litigation against pharmaceutical companies, including opioid manufacturers and distributors related to their contributions to the deadly epidemic, as well as litigation taking place in federal court on behalf of thousands of cities and counties in the United States. The documents in the archive include emails, memos, presentations, sales reports, budgets, audit reports, Drug Enforcement Administration briefings, meeting agendas and minutes, expert witness reports, and depositions of drug company executives.

The Opioid Industry Documents Archive leverages extraordinary expertise within UCSF and Johns Hopkins University in library science, information technology, and digital archiving. It also relies on scholarship focused on many dimensions of the opioid epidemic, ranging from the history of medicine to pharmaceutical policy to clinical care.

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The new archive will provide free public access to anyone who is interested in investigating the activities that have led to the devastating epidemic, which has now contributed to the deaths of nearly 500,000 people. The archive will promptly include new documents as they become available through resolution of legal action against companies that contributed to the opioid crisis. The launch coincides with the universities’ efforts to house more than 250,000 documents produced by opioid manufacturer Insys in the course of its bankruptcy proceedings following opioid litigation.

The archive currently contains 3,300 documents (more than 131,000 pages) in six collections:

• Washington Post Opioid Collection
• KHN OxyContin Collection
• Oklahoma Opioid Litigation Documents
• Kentucky Opioid Litigation Documents
• National Prescription Opiate Litigation Documents
• Insys Litigation Documents

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