Life expectancy for Americans has increased dramatically since 1900, as have the available pharmacotherapeutic options. Unfortunately, pharmacotherapy mishaps occur commonly in the older adult population. This problem greatly affects the morbidity and mortality of elderly patients and greatly increases healthcare costs. To improve patient care among elderly adults, healthcare practitioners must consider several issues when developing a pharmacotherapy plan. A thorough understanding of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, adverse drug reactions, drug interactions, and several other factors is necessary for practitioners to develop a safe and effective drug therapy plan for older adults. This review provides a general but comprehensive review of the issues pertaining to pharmacotherapy in elderly people and offers several suggestions for improving their pharmaceutical care.

Pharmacovigilance is the process of identifying, monitoring, and effectively reducing adverse drug reactions. Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are an important consideration when assessing a patient's health. The proliferation of new pharmaceuticals means that the incidence of ADRs is increasing. The goal for all health care providers must be to minimize the risk of ADRs as much as possible. Steps to achieve this include understanding the pharmacology for all drugs prescribed and proactively assessing and monitoring those patients at greatest risk for developing an ADR. Groups at greatest risk for developing ADRs include the elderly, children, and pregnant patients, as well as others. Pharmacovigilance must effectively be practiced by all health providers in order to avoid ADRs.

The population of older adult patients in the United States is growing each year. Appropriate pharmacotherapy has allowed many older patients to live longer and maintain healthy lives. Unfortunately, the inappropriate utilization of medications can be harmful to older adult patients. Inappropriate pharmacotherapy may lead to overusing medications and polypharmacy. Polypharmacy can contribute to a higher incidence of adverse effects, increase the risk of dangerous drug interactions, cause noncompliance with appropriate medication use, and significantly increase the cost of health care. The polypharmacy issue with geriatric patients has been described as an epidemic and this issue must be addressed. This review provides objective rules that may help prevent polypharmacy. Consideration of these rules when prescribing, dispensing, and caring for older adult patients will improve the overall pharmacotherapy regimens instituted by healthcare providers.

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Exchange of location and sensor data among connected and automated vehicles will demand accurate global referencing of the digital maps currently being developed to aid positioning for automated driving. This paper explores the limit of such maps’ globally-referenced position accuracy when the mapping agents are equipped with low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers performing standard code-phase-based navigation, and presents a globally-referenced electro-optical simultaneous localization and mapping pipeline, called GEOSLAM, designed to achieve this limit. The key accuracy-limiting factor is shown to be the asymptotic average of the error sources that impair standard GNSS positioning. Asymptotic statistics of each GNSS error source are analyzed through both simulation and empirical data to show that sub-50-cm accurate digital mapping is feasible in the horizontal plane after multiple mapping sessions with standard GNSS, but larger biases persist in the vertical direction. GEOSLAM achieves this accuracy by (i) incorporating standard GNSS position estimates in the visual SLAM framework, (ii) merging digital maps from multiple mapping sessions, and (iii) jointly optimizing structure and motion with respect to time-separated GNSS measurements.