Workstream 2

Research team

Peter Gardner, Andy Clegg, Duncan Petty, Muhammad Faisal, David Mehdizadeh, Owen Johnson, Ciarán McInerney, George Peat, Janice Olaniyan

Collaborations

This is a collaboration between the Safe Use of Medicines and the Digital Innovations Themes of the Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Translational Research Centre

Why is this project important?

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.

Patients with diagnosed frailty are particularly susceptible to experiencing adverse effects. However, we do not know which medicines and combinations of medicines put patients with frailty at higher risk.

What are we doing?

We are looking at anonymised healthcare data of medicines that are commonly prescribed to older people with frailty and investigating whether there are associations between medicines and adverse health outcomes such as falls and death as well as reduced quality of life and reduced cognition.

Initially, we are focusing on medicines with anticholinergic effects and then we will move on to other medicine groups known to be harmful in older people (not necessarily with frailty).

Patient and public involvement and engagement

None

Outputs and impact

We will uncover associations between medicines and adverse health outcomes in frail older people, which will inform a case finding tool for GPs and clinical pharmacists in general practice to use to identify patients for structured (clinical) medication reviews (see work-stream 4).

Contact for more information

Peter Gardner, Andy Clegg, George Peat