On a Saturday night in the emergency ward of a large city hospital, two young men brought in an unconscious young woman. Having told the medical staff on duty that the young woman had been “messing with ‘Georgia Home Boy,’” they left. The health care workers didn’t know what that meant. Was it a fight, had she been assaulted, or was it something else? It turns out that she had taken an illegal drug.

Fortunately for the young woman, this hospital had a DSS that includes a searchable database of more than 4,000 slang street drug terms that allows medical personnel to quickly determine the medical term that corresponds to the street name. The underlying database, which can be accessed using a notebook computer or a hand-held device, has more than 70 slang terms for amphetamines and more than 130 common street names for crack cocaine.

In our case of the young woman, the drug was Gamma Hydroxybutyic Acid, or GHB—“Georgia Home Boy”—an illegal drug that gives the user a sense of euphoria and intoxication. When this drug is mixed with alcohol, the result can be respiratory distress and coma. Because their DSS gave them speedy access to the name of the drug, along with its symptoms, likely uses or misuses (for example, use with alcohol), the ER staff could quickly determine the best treatment. With this DSS, the medical staff has a system that can save precious seconds in deciding how best to help patients—seconds that can save lives.