An informatics approach to assess pediatric pharmacotherapy: design and implementation of a hospital drug utilization system.
Drug utilization in the inpatient setting can provide a mechanism to assess drug prescribing trends, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of hospital formularies and examine subpopulations for which prescribing habits may be different. Such data can be used to correlate trends with time-dependent or seasonal changes in clinical event rates or the introduction of new pharmaceuticals. It is now possible to provide a robust, dynamic analysis of drug utilization in a large pediatric inpatient setting through the creation of a Web-based hospital drug utilization system that retrieves source data from our accounting database. The production implementation provides a dynamic and historical account of drug utilization at the authors' institution. The existing application can easily be extended to accommodate a multi-institution environment. The creation of a national or even global drug utilization network would facilitate the examination of geographical and/or socioeconomic influences in drug utilization and prescribing practices in general.
Zuppa
Athena
A
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Abramson Research Center, Suite 916 J, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 34th and Civic Center Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. zuppa@email.chop.edu
Vijayakumar
Sundararajan
S
Jayaraman
Bhuvana
B
Patel
Dimple
D
Narayan
Mahesh
M
Vijayakumar
Kalpana
K
Mondick
John T
JT
Barrett
Jeffrey S
JS
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000458:organization & administration; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004358:Drug Therapy; D017723:Drug Utilization Review / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005572:Formularies, Hospital as Topic; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006776:Hospitals, Pediatric; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D020407:Internet; D008875:Middle Aged; D010372:Pediatrics; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013997:Time Factors