Understanding and Managing Polypharmacy
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Molecular. Genetics & Pop Health
Abstract
The current title for this project is Understanding and Managing Polypharmacy. Officially, according to most governmental guidelines, Polypharmacy describes an individual that has been prescribed ten or more medications at any given time. However, in reality, any individual who is taking four or more medications can be included within the Polypharmacy framework. Presently, I will be examining the Scottish Government's guidelines on Polypharmacy, The Scottish Government Model of Care Polypharmacy Working Group, as they are the first to tackle the issue of Polypharmacy in great depth throughout the world. These guidelines deal with Polypharmacy and its links with frailty/geriatric care and will be the focus of my research at present. New guidelines comparing Polypharmacy and individuals with multi-morbidities will be introduced, in the near future, and my research will include this new information when released to the public.
The aim of my research is to examine the effectiveness of the Polypharmacy Guidance in helping physicians, and other medical professionals prescribing multiple medications to individual patients. With the assistance of these guidelines, they can monitor the drugs assigned to their patients, assess each drug and its necessity to improve their patients health. A new Polypharmacy app has been introduced by the Scottish government to allow medical professionals to implement a '7-step process', a step-by-step procedure of how physicians can assist patients with Polypharmacy and how best to determine the requirement of the medication for the individual in question.
The overall plan is, once my initial research of the Polypharmacy Guidance and its role in Patient e-health is complete in year 1, I will within year 2 and/or 3 of the project, visit hospitals and interview medical professionals within the field of primary and secondary care who utilise the Polypharmacy app/guidance with their patients to investigate its effectiveness for real-world application in the medical care. Furthermore, I will work through Polypharmacy datasets to detect firsthand the scale of the Polypharmacy problem. This research will all be used to enhance the guidelines set out by the Scottish government and create a more user-friendly app for physicians to lower, or at least, improve the extent of Polypharmacy prescribing within the medical profession.
All the information in this summary is subject to change, in future. This is just a rough outline to describe the direction that my research is going, at this stage in my PhD.
The aim of my research is to examine the effectiveness of the Polypharmacy Guidance in helping physicians, and other medical professionals prescribing multiple medications to individual patients. With the assistance of these guidelines, they can monitor the drugs assigned to their patients, assess each drug and its necessity to improve their patients health. A new Polypharmacy app has been introduced by the Scottish government to allow medical professionals to implement a '7-step process', a step-by-step procedure of how physicians can assist patients with Polypharmacy and how best to determine the requirement of the medication for the individual in question.
The overall plan is, once my initial research of the Polypharmacy Guidance and its role in Patient e-health is complete in year 1, I will within year 2 and/or 3 of the project, visit hospitals and interview medical professionals within the field of primary and secondary care who utilise the Polypharmacy app/guidance with their patients to investigate its effectiveness for real-world application in the medical care. Furthermore, I will work through Polypharmacy datasets to detect firsthand the scale of the Polypharmacy problem. This research will all be used to enhance the guidelines set out by the Scottish government and create a more user-friendly app for physicians to lower, or at least, improve the extent of Polypharmacy prescribing within the medical profession.
All the information in this summary is subject to change, in future. This is just a rough outline to describe the direction that my research is going, at this stage in my PhD.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Robin Williams (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Maram Zahraa (Student) |
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MR/N013166/1 | 01/10/2016 | 30/09/2025 | |||
| 1940744 | Studentship | MR/N013166/1 | 01/09/2017 | 31/01/2022 | Maram Zahraa |
| Description | Attendance of panel meeting at Scottish Governement |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Impact | I attended a panel meeting with important members of the healthcare profession in Scotland to have influence over an app that is accessible to people with polypharmacy, who wish to keep track of their medications with their physicians by way of Shared Decision Making. The impact that this meeting had was an improvement to who physicians would be able to use the app and how this can be linked to their computer/ patient records, an improvement in how polypharmacy is monitored and can be controlled in a safer manner, easier medication reviews with drug consumption not getting out of hand and improved relationships better physician and patient. |
| Title | Asthma Prescribing Data Analysis |
| Description | Analysis of prescribing data in asthma patients in Scotland between the years 2009 to 2016 have been conducted as part of my research. This analysis has been conducted using R programming code. This analysis has been used to analyse patterns in prescribing and dispensing. This coding format will be used to discover more information on how medications are prescribed. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2009 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The code could be reproduced to analyse future prescribing data. Trends and factors such as adherence, prescribing cascades, adverse drug reactions and other personal factors such as socioeconomic background can be analysed and discovered. This could be used for more longitudinal forms of data so as to better understand how prescribing and dispensing occurs and, therefore, in the long run, can be improved. An understanding of patients' prescriptions could allow for inappropriate medications to be highlighted and understand the scope of issues with prescribing and, in particular, repeat prescriptions. |
| Title | Interviews |
| Description | Interviews were conducted with healthcare professionals, GPS, Specialist Physicians and Pharmacists, with a working knowledge of polypharmacy on their views on how polypharmacy comes about, common themes in the demographics of polypharmacy patients, ways of lowering polypharmacy and whether deprescribing is an effective way to lower polypharmacy. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | A better understanding of how healthcare professionals view and treat polypharmacy patients. The treatment burden of polypharmacy patients could be improved with this understanding of how healthcare professionals think is the best way, in their opinion, to lower polypharmacy that is easiest for them to implement. Furthermore, knowing the demographics of polypharmacy patients allows us to target patients with (possible) polypharmacy better. |
| Title | Asthma Learning Health System - Polypharmacy |
| Description | A database containing asthma sufferers in the UK. This database is being used to analyse levels of polypharmacy in asthma patients in the UK. This database is being regularly stratified and used to discover new connections in asthma patients and polypharmacy. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2010 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The Code, that has been created using the programming language R, was used to create this database of polypharmacy could potentially be used by other people to create similar databases in their own data. |