Older people in particular often take several medicines at the same time. This can lead to undesirable drug side effects and interactions. Consequences can be additional clinical pictures and need for therapy. Relevant drug-related problems are often underestimated and are frequently the cause of morbidity and mortality of patients in hospital. In the cross-consortium use case INTERPOLAR, the four Medical Informatics Initiative Consortia DIFUTURE, HiGHmed, MIRACUM and SMITH are working together to develop IT solutions for the prevention of drug interactions. Project coordination is the responsibility of the SMITH consortium office.
The INTERPOLAR use case focuses on algorithm-based identification of high-risk patients with medication problems. Using IT infrastructure from the Medical Informatics Initiative, hospital pharmacists can prioritize these patients for assessment. An IT-based risk score will help pharmacists find high-risk patients faster, improving drug safety. Studies aim to prove the IT-supported risk assessment’s effectiveness in reducing medication-related problems.
The four-phase project begins with setting up technical requirements at participating data centers. Next, an intervention study involving over 90,000 patients across eight university hospitals will take place. Subsequently, seven additional hospitals will participate in a final phase study with 30,000 patients to determine if INTERPOLAR can be effective outside a traditional study setting. Lastly, collected data will be used to refine algorithms and develop predictive models.