Safe Use of Medicines
Our Projects
Workstream 1 - Patient, carer and healthcare staff experiences of deprescribing
Patients who have several health issues often need to take several medicines. This means that they have a higher chance of reacting badly to their medication. Bad reactions to medicines can be because of side effects, or different medicines not mixing well in the body, or medicines causing other health problems.
Workstream 2 - Exploring associations between medicines and adverse health outcomes
We know that the use of multiple medicines increases the risk of patients suffering an adverse reaction. Older patients (65 years and older) are common users of multiple medicines and are therefore at higher risk of experiencing an adverse event from the medicines they take.
Workstream 3 - Experience-based Co-design of a deprescribing intervention
Older patients (65 years and older) and those with a diagnosis of frailty often take multiple medicines and are on complex drug regimens. We also know that sometimes medicines become problematic over time – for example, more medicines increase the risk of side effects due to drug interactions.
Workstream 4 - Safe Use of Medicines and Digital Innovations: Development of a case-finding tool
Currently, there is no way of systematically case-finding patients at higher-risk of suffering and adverse event from medicines until they have experienced them. Older patients (65 years or older) with a diagnosis of frailty are particularly at risk of suffering adverse events from combinations of medicines they take.
Workstream 5 - Evaluating a deprescribing intervention
We know that the use of multiple medicines increases the risk of patients suffering an adverse reaction. Older patients (65 years and older) are common users of multiple medicines and are therefore at higher risk of experiencing an adverse event from the medicines they take.
RESI-Med - Understanding and enhancing medicines management resilience in home-dwelling older people living with frailty
People living at home and their informal carers would benefit from greater skills and knowledge to enable effective self-management of medicines.