Pharmacoepidemiology – from description to quality assessment. A Swedish perspective

Abstract

Parallel with increasing concerns about drug safety, the importance of drug surveillance and the application of epidemiological techniques have grown rapidly during the past decades. The increasing use of computerized health care data facilitates the establishment of populations large enough to allow epidemiological studies. By the use of computerized pharmacy or billing records, drug exposure is linked to files which include outcome data (diagnoses). Pioneering pharmacoepidemiology surveys of prescriptions purchased from defined populations were initiated in the late 1960s. Two such population-based drug databases for research (Jämtland and Tierp) are still in use in Sweden and can provide key epidemiological data such as incidence and prevalence of drug use by age and sex. This basic information on drug use can only be obtained if there is a personal identifier on the prescription. Important studies such as quality of care, polypharmacy, drug interactions, drug abuse and physicians' prescribing habits all require data on drug use by individuals. Unfortunately, because of sensitivity to the issue of data confidentiality in Sweden, the correspondingly recorded data on prescriptions relative to individual patients is not available for use in health care audits or research. With these limitations in access to patient specific data on drug use, focus is now instead on improving the quality of drug prescribing by use of available drug statistics. The number of drugs that account for 90% of the use -the Drug Utilization 90% segment -and adherence to guidelines in this segment are now being tested as general indicators for assessing the quality of drug prescribing.

Relevance of pharmacoepidemiology to Nepal

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Diagnosis-prescription studies – important steps towards a national drug prescription statistics in Norway

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