Adverse effects of drugs? To discover them, a new research tool could be useful: electronic medical records. This was shown by a recent study coordinated by Mei Liu, a computer expert at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, according to which electronic records would allow the validation of previously reported adverse drug reactions and the identification of new ones. The team of researchers analyzed twelve years of data from Vanderbilt University! y Medical Center and correlated abnormal laboratory test results from patients with the type of medications they were taking. «Safety requires that each drug be monitored during the period in which it is marketed and an early identification of reactions can lead to a reduction in the harm suffered by patients. Recently, data recorded in electronic health records has emerged as a highly valuable resource for discovering these side effects,” Liu explained. Liu is engaged in research using IT approaches in the medical field. The goal is the development of sophisticated data mining methodologies to be applied to the data contained in electronic health archives, to increase the quality, safety and effectiveness of therapies. This could lead to predictive models to assess the risk of contracting diseases such as cancer and diabetes. "Electronic medical records - underlined the researcher - constitute an unprecedented tool for conducting observational studies, as they contain detailed information on patients and also a large amount of clinical data that can be analyzed longitudinally, in their temporal evolution".
11 June 2013 – DoctorNews33
