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DUBLIN, Jan. 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — The “The U.S. Addiction Rehab Industry — 5th Edition” report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com’s offering.

Drug, alcohol and other addiction rehab in the United States is big business — $42 billion this year.

There are now 14,000+ treatment facilities and growing. A total of 3.7 million persons received treatment, but many more need it and facilities are filled to capacity. Insurance coverage for rehab has increased, but scandals abound as shoddy facilities opened and patient brokering, overbilling and deceptive marketing became common. Reforms are pending. Private equity firms are investing.

“Almost 21 million Americans have at least one addiction, yet only 10% of them receive treatment. Drug overdose deaths have more than tripled since 1990. From 1999 to 2017, more than 700,000 Americans died from overdosing on a drug. Alcohol and drug addiction cost the U.S. economy over $600 billion every year.”


Addiction is more common than many realize. Millions of Americans of all walks of life struggle with drug and alcohol addiction every day.

It can be a gastrointestinal disease causing only diarrhea and abdominal pain. It can cause symptoms that may be confused with a cold or the flu. It can cause pinkeye, a runny nose, loss of taste and smell, muscle aches, fatigue, diarrhea, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, whole-body rashes, and areas of swelling and redness in just a few spots.

In a more severe disease, doctors have also reported people having heart rhythm problems, heart failure, kidney damage, confusion, headaches, seizures, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and fainting spells, along with new sugar control problems.

It’s not just a fever and coughing, leading to shortness of breath, like everyone thought at first.

High-quality data is the fuel that powers AI algorithms. Without a continual flow of labeled data, bottlenecks can occur and the algorithm will slowly get worse and add risk to the system.

It’s why labeled data is so critical for companies like Zoox, Cruise and Waymo, which use it to train machine learning models to develop and deploy autonomous vehicles. That need is what led to the creation of Scale AI, a startup that uses software and people to process and label image, lidar and map data for companies building machine learning algorithms. Companies working on autonomous vehicle technology make up a large swath of Scale’s customer base, although its platform is also used by Airbnb, Pinterest and OpenAI, among others.

The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed, or even halted, that flow of data as AV companies suspended testing on public roads — the means of collecting billions of images. Scale is hoping to turn the tap back on, and for free.