Abstract

PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY AND DRUG UTILISATION STUDY- A BRIEF REVIEW

Virendra Kushwaha, Pooja Agrawal*, Vipul Shukla, Arka Das and Harsh Vekaria

Abstract

Pharmacoepidemiology (PE) is the study of use and effect of drugs in large numbers of people. It combines both Clinical Pharmacology and Epidemiology and investigates the use of the drug in real conditions of life. It provides Real-World Data (RWD) on drug utilization and drug effects in people with multiple comorbidities and polypharmacy. RWD includes automated electronic records of interactions with healthcare services that are routinely collected for administration or payment purposes, so RWD are less time consuming, cheaper and representative of real population. But we have challenges in PE data because they are not collected for research purpose and may have missing data, confounding and concern about accuracy and validity of data. PE data can also be used to assess effectiveness of drugs and risk associated with drugs. Drug Utilisation Research (DUR) studies aim to estimate the patterns of medication use in large populations. It focuses on various medical, social, and economic aspects of drug use. It is also useful to estimate adherence to prescribing guidelines for a condition in a population.

Keywords: Pharmacoepidemiology, Population, Real world data.