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16th Annual Meeting of the German Drug Utilisation Research Group (GAA)

Gesellschaft für Arzneimittelforschung und Arzneimittelepidemiologie

19.11. - 20.11.2009, Berlin

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Development and application of an electronic tool for the collection of medication data in pharmacoepidemiological studies

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  • Renate Quinzler - Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
  • Kristina Zint - Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
  • Elke Raum - Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Research, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany
  • Hermann Brenner - Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Research, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany
  • Michael Metzner - Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
  • corresponding author Walter E. Haefeli - Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Gesellschaft für Arzneimittelanwendungsforschung und Arzneimittelepidemiologie e.V. (GAA). 16. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Arzneimittelanwendungsforschung und Arzneimittelepidemiologie. Berlin, 19.-20.11.2009. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2009. Doc09gaa16

doi: 10.3205/09gaa16, urn:nbn:de:0183-09gaa165

Published: November 5, 2009

© 2009 Quinzler et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Background and aim: The assessment of drug exposure requires detailed information on specific drug characteristics and dosage regimen. We developed a tool for electronic collection of medication data in pharmacoepidemiological studies e.g. suitable for use at home visits when drug packages are available.

Material and method: We developed the concept for a user-friendly data capture tool that allows electronic collection of detailed medication data and is equipped with an easy update and backup system to prevent data loss. The system was tested in home assessments of a large cohort of elderly patients.

Results: For a user-friendly collection of medication data drugs can be entered via a barcode reader, whenever the drug package is available. Otherwise, brand names can be searched and chosen within an actual collection of marketed drugs. In both cases a unique product identifier is entered in the database, allowing linkage to databases with detailed drug information. Therefore, a medication database containing all marketed drugs is included in the system and updated regularly. Default dosage regimen is the ‘four-times-daily-scheme’ but any dosage regimen can be entered in a structured and analyzable form. In addition, detailed information e.g. on drug handling is collected for each product. After each interview a copy of the database is stored on a medium and a unique identifier for each user, patient, and drug allows uniting databases when the tool is concurrently used at different locations.

The tool is applied in a large cohort study. Until now, medication data of 511 patients have been collected (2,569 drugs). Of all drugs 70.6% were assessed with a barcode reader. The ‘four-times-daily’ dosage regimen was chosen most frequently (83.2%).

Conclusions: This tool allows electronic assessment of detailed drug information in pharmacoepidemiological studies. Its practicability has been demonstrated in a large prospective cohort study.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), grant No. 01ET0718.