Brad Pommen believes vending machines can offer more than candy and chips.

Pommen, the president of Nelson鈥檚 SMRT1 Technologies, introduced a machine last week that carries a mix of paid and free items such as naloxone kits, syringes, condoms and sundries like deodorant and toothpaste.

He says the machine provides 24-7 access to products and information in locations with fewer services to deal with the ongoing opioid crisis.

鈥淚 really want to be able to connect communities,鈥� said Pommen. 鈥淚n rural communities, these types of services are far reaching. They need to be everywhere, but typically because of dollars they鈥檙e not getting into rural communities.鈥�

The unique machine features a large touchscreen that can show videos on how to use naloxone, connect users to local services such as shelters, display fentanyl alerts and provide data on community needs.

Pommen鈥檚 machine is currently set up at ANKORS鈥� overdose prevention site in Nelson. He said the company is rolling out five other pilot sites over the next three months at locations in 琉璃神社, Kamloops, Penticton, Surrey and Vancouver鈥檚 Downtown Eastside before placing up to 20 across Canada.

Cheryl Dowden, executive director of ANKORS, said the machine will be moved out of their office to a downtown location within the coming months.

鈥淲e want to move it outside into the community so that after-hours people can access those supplies,鈥� she said. 鈥淧eople who access our services, people who are out in the club scene for the night, they can get some fentanyl test strips, they can get a naloxone kit. This is really for the community in its broadest sense.鈥�

Three years ago Pommen noticed public schools were beginning to retire vending machines. His initial idea was to repurpose them as science kits for kids.

鈥淎fter we spent about a year and a half building the prototype and getting it all set, we stood back and said holy, this is not something that鈥檚 in the rest of the world. We basically then took a bit more time on it to develop it into a fully robust system that can work for any retail industry.鈥�

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Six months ago Pommen turned his attention to , which led to 981 deaths in 2019 and 1,542 in 2018. He partnered with Surrey-based NucleusLabs, who provide the machine鈥檚 medical technology.

In Nelson, Pommen is offering the machine for free as well as tech support while ANKORS provides the products.

He鈥檚 not concerned about the machine being broken into or damaged either once it moves downtown. The touchscreen is Gorilla Glass, which Pommen bangs on to demonstrate its toughness.

鈥淣ormally vending machines are quite robust in that sense, you don鈥檛 see them broken into that often. Usually they are broken down before they are broken into,鈥� he said.

鈥淪o this allows us to use off-the-shelf vending machine technologies. We didn鈥檛 have to invent anything new, we just invented a controller that now gave this 30-year-old machine a new lease on life.鈥�

And because it is a vending machine, there are also potato chips for sale.

鈥淏ecause everybody鈥檚 hungry,鈥� said Pommen.

tyler.harper@nelsonstar.com
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