title: Data visualization speeds review of potential adverse drug events in patients on multiple medications.
abstract: Patients on multiple medications are at increased risk for adverse drug events. While physicians can reduce this risk by regularly reviewing the side-effect profiles of their patients' medications, this process can be time-consuming. We created a decision support system designed to expedite reviewing potential adverse reactions through information visualization. The system includes a database containing 16,340 unique drug and side-effect pairs, representing 250 common medications. A numeric score is assigned to each pair reflecting the strength of association between drug and effect. Based on these scores, the system generates graphical adverse reaction maps for any user-selected combination of drugs. A study comparing speed and accuracy of retrieving side-effect data using this tool versus UpToDate demonstrated a 60% reduction in time to complete a query (61 s vs. 155 s, p < 0.0001) with no decrease in accuracy. These findings suggest that information visualization can significantly expedite review of potential adverse drug events.
authors.affiliation: Regenstrief Institute, Indianapolis, IN, USA. jduke@regenstrief.org
authors.forename: Jon D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Duke
authors.forename: Xiaochun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Shaun J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Grannis
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003196:Computer Graphics; D016208:Databases, Factual; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D019338:Polypharmacy