EPAM and National Capital Poison Center (NCPC) Partner to Redesign Innovative Poison Emergency App, Providing Quick, Reliable Solutions for Exposures
Digital Lifesaving: Changing Poison Control with NCPC
At a glance
CLIENT
National Capital Poison Center
STRATEGIC PARTNER
- Microsoft
SERVICES
- CX+
- Engineering
INDUSTRY
- Life Sciences & Healthcare
EPAM holds a 10-year partnership with National Capital Poison Center (NCPC) to maintain and enhance webPOISONCONTROL®, a lifesaving poison triage app that helps the US population access expert guidance during poison emergencies. In 2024, the app celebrated a significant milestone of helping over 1M users. In February 2025, we redesigned a new user experience, aimed at making the app faster, easier and clearer. With each improvement, webPOISONCONTROL continues to set a new standard in poison management, ensuring life-saving support is always just a few clicks away.
THE 10-YEAR MISSION
Remove the Guesswork in Critical Situations
Since the mid 1950’s, the nation’s poison centers have been on a mission to provide emergency telephone guidance to the public to help triage two million poison exposure cases annually. Generations of Americans have grown up with poison control as a trusted public emergency service. Many may remember TV ads or stickers, which served to communicate the most important element: the 1-800-222-1222 number to call.
A decade ago, one of these centers, NCPC, was inspired by another call to action: to meet the needs of people who won’t — or can’t — call poison control centers.
In December 2014, webPOISONCONTROL and its suite of administrative and content applications were launched under the hypothesis that the solution had “ the potential to improve public access to accurate poisoning information, reduce poison center operating expenses by diverting cases to an automated app, increase poison center efficiency by minimizing the time required to reach a triage decision, and harmonize triage practices across the United States.”
To meet this challenge, NCPC partnered with EPAM to develop webPOISONCONTROL, a free, easy-to-use online resource for the public to find reliable poison information and an innovative interactive tool to help triage a broad range of poison exposures, such as pharmaceuticals, supplements, household products, plants, and bites and stings. Built on EPAM’s engineering DNA, webPOISONCONTROL is an extremely flexible .net application, which allows integration with additional databases. The application uses Microsoft Azure to offer a scalable and reliable infrastructure platform that is ready for the future.
Using the browser-based tool (which is also available on the App Store and Google Play), users have access to expert guidance. They input the substance (from a name, pill imprint code or product barcode), how they were exposed (by mouth, eye, skin, inhalation, injection or bite/sting), how much of the substance was swallowed, their age, weight and any symptoms. Based on this information, users receive a personalized, case-specific recommendation (all within about two and a half minutes) — to stay home because toxicity is minimal, go to the emergency room (ER) or call Poison Control for further guidance. If the recommendation is to stay at home, the app provides home treatment essentials, information on specific symptoms that are likely to occur and are not of concern, as well as symptoms that should trigger a call to Poison Control or an ER visit.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Putting Experts in Your Pocket
The webPOISONCONTROL platform is underpinned by its people. Behind the scenes, an administrative application, built by EPAM, allows the team of toxicologists and poison control experts at NCPC and collaborating poison centers to create and orchestrate the application logic through an innovative recommendation engine built on nearly 3000 complex, ingredient-specific algorithms. These algorithms enable analysis of the user’s case based on their exposure data and qualifying thresholds, such as age/weight and amount swallowed, to produce instant, possibly life-saving and often anxiety-reducing, recommendations.
The algorithm and substance databases are ever growing. To date, the toxicology team has amassed a database of nearly 200,000 substances, including pharmaceuticals, supplements, household products, plants, and animals. Also included are 1.5 million product barcodes users can scan directly from the app.
Using the administrative application, the toxicology team is also responsible for the accurate collection, adaptation and analysis of user data; matching substances to ingredients, barcodes and algorithms; updating product data; and implementing robust, evidence-based algorithms to calculate toxicity and delineate recommendations.
While serving the public will always be the top priority of this project, NCPC also wants to help and support all poison centers nationwide and their Specialists in Poison Information or SPIs. At present, the administrative capabilities of the platform and a professional version of the public tool are in use in 29 of the 54 US poison centers, providing triage thresholds and supporting case data to help SPIs handle live calls efficiently, and, more broadly, to harmonize poison center triage. NCPC stands by its original guiding principle that “webPOISONCONTROL is not a replacement for traditional poison control centers. Instead, it augments their services by providing another way to access expert guidance.”
ADAPTING TO OUR WORLD TODAY
New Redesign Enhances User Experience
Technology is always advancing, and as a long-term partner to NCPC, EPAM prioritizes staying ahead of trends and adapting to user needs. To ensure webPOISONCONTROL continues to deliver real-world value to users, we redesigned the app to make it more accessible and intuitive for public users. This effort started with a small, cross-discipline, technical and design team from EPAM who closely studied NCPC calls and developed improvements to the interface that more closely mirror the experience of an actual call.
Looking ahead, our team is exploring responsible integration with contextual AI with LLM-based chatbots into the webPOISONCONTROL app. This advancement will enable user interpretation and process communications even more effectively, setting a foundation for future GenAI development and enhancing user interaction.
Results to Date
Over our 10-year partnership, EPAM converted the expertise of poison control center toxicologists into a simple, user-friendly interface. webPOISONCONTROL delivers accurate and safe recommendations with the following features:
An innovative recommendation engine built on thousands of complex algorithms
A growing substance database of pharmaceuticals, supplements, household products, plants and barcodes
Two public facing websites that host NCPC poison prevention and information content and the webPOISONCONTROL Data Analysis Dashboard implemented in QlikSense
Five fully responsive web applications
Android and iOS mobile apps
A pill identifier application to identify pills based on color, shape and imprint code
To date, more than one million people have safely used webPOISONCONTROL for online poison exposure help, which has resulted in decreased overuse of ER visits and therefore decreased healthcare costs. Recommendations are free, confidential and prepared by clinical toxicology experts. With this recent enhancement of webPOISONCONTROL, NCPC continues to innovate and expand its reach, affirming its commitment to make a significant difference in public health by serving more people and aggressively filling the need for accurate online poison control, triage and treatment information for those who just won't call.
HEAR FROM THE CUSTOMER
“EPAM has been a passionate, strategic partner to NCPC over the last 10 years, providing innovative and user-friendly translations of complex and nuanced case management logic. With their help, we’ve been able to meet the needs of more individuals facing poison emergencies. Educating the public to respond quickly to a poison exposure is the first step to optimizing patient outcomes. Make sure your family, friends and colleagues know how to contact Poison Control either online through webPOISONCONTROL or by phone (1-800-222-1222).”
Toby Litovitz, MD
webPOISONCONTROL Director
TECH STACK
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