Pharmacotherapy and Pharmaceutical Care

Health related outcomes are, primarily, objective parameters defined as clinical outcomes observed by health care providers. On the contrary, humanistic outcomes take into account patient perspective and include the evaluation of quality of life and patient satisfaction. Drug related problems form the base of pharmacist cognitive services usually described by the terms pharmaceutical care and clinical pharmacy. The aim of such activities is to optimise and rationalise medicine treatment in order to achieve definite outcomes. Several risk factors lead to drug related problems including drug-drug interactions, poor adherence, inappropriate prescribing and dispensing. Pharmacists are experts in pharmacotherapy and are responsible for ensuring the safe, appropriate, and economical use of medicines. The integration of pharmacist services into the health care system and the cooperation of pharmacist with other health care personal and patients is of utmost importance.

• Health outcomes of pharmacotherapy
• Drug related problems and their risk factors
• Context, structure, processes, outcomes and impact of health care services
• Public health research

CAPABILITIES

• Design and evaluation of pharmacy services (i.e. medication review, pharmaceutical care and clinical pharmacy programs)
• Design and/or validation of instruments (e.g. quality of life and patient satisfaction questionnaires)
• Design of clinical trials and biostatistical data analysis

Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics

Research focus is the study of medicine effectiveness and safety after marketing authorization (i.e. while getting into the hands of patients). Research includes the evaluation of benefit-risk profiles of drugs, comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness and is predominantly evaluated in the area of oncology, cardiovascular diseases and vaccination. Market uptake and the accessibility of patients to new treatment strategies are of particular interest. The research area can be embedded into health technology assessment that forms an integral part of health care policy.

• Pharmacoepidemiology
• Comparative effectiveness and safety
• Medicine pricing and reimbursement policy
• Pharmacoeconomics and health economics
• Health care policy research

CAPABILITIES

• Data mining of databases
• Model development and simulation
• Health technology assessment
• Medicine market consultancy