Okoli, GN;
Myles, P;
Murray-Thomas, T;
Shepherd, H;
Wong, ICK;
Edwards, D;
(2021)
Use of Primary Care Data in Research and Pharmacovigilance: Eight Scenarios Where Prescription Data are Absent.
Drug Safety
10.1007/s40264-021-01093-9.
(In press).
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Abstract
The use of primary care databases has been integral in pharmacoepidemiological studies and pharmacovigilance. Primary care databases derive from electronic health records and offer a comprehensive description of aggregate patient data, from demography to medication history, and good sample sizes. Studies using these databases improve our understanding of prescribing characteristics and associated risk factors to facilitate better patient care, but there are limitations. We describe eight key scenarios where study data outcomes can be affected by absent prescriptions in UK primary care databases: (1) out-of-hours, urgent care and acute care prescriptions; (2) specialist-only prescriptions; (3) alternative community prescribing, such as pharmacy, family planning clinic or sexual health clinic medication prescriptions; (4) newly licensed medication prescriptions; (5) medications that do not require prescriptions; (6) hospital inpatient and outpatient prescriptions; (7) handwritten prescriptions; and (8) private pharmacy and private doctor prescriptions. The significance of each scenario is dependent on the type of medication under investigation, nature of the study and expected outcome measures. We recommend that all researchers using primary care databases be aware of the potential for missing prescribing data and be sensitive to how this can vary substantially between items, drug classes, patient groups and over time. Close liaison with practising primary care clinicians in the UK is often essential to ensure awareness of nuances in clinical practice.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Use of Primary Care Data in Research and Pharmacovigilance: Eight Scenarios Where Prescription Data are Absent |
| Location: | New Zealand |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s40264-021-01093-9 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40264-021-01093-9 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy > Practice and Policy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10132090 |
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