The Hospital Drug Utilization
Drug utilization in the in-patient setting can provide a mechanism to assess drug prescribing trends, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of hospital formularies and examine subpopulations for which prescribing habits may be different. Such data can be used to correlate trends with time dependent or seasonal changes in clinical event rates or the introduction of new pharmaceuticals. We are now able to provide a robust, dynamic analysis of drug utilization in a large pediatric in-patient setting through the creation of a web-based, Hospital Drug Utilization (HDU) system that retrieves source data from our accounting database. The core functionality of the HDU system is shown via typical queries of interest using data from the 2001 calendar year. The production implementation provides a dynamic and historical account of drug utilization at our institution. We expect that the HDU system will further provide a means to monitor pharmacotherapeutic outcomes at our institution. Current efforts to create a Pediatric Knowledgebase will rely on the HDU as a critical foundation system. The existing application can easily be extended to accommodate a multi-institution environment. The creation of a national or even global drug utilization network would facilitate the examination of geographical and/or socioeconomic influences in drug utilization and prescribing practices in general. This would be invaluable for the pediatric community given the void in which decisions about drug investigation in pediatrics typically occurs.
Below, are a few screen shots from the HDU application. For a more hands-on session with the actual application, please send an email to pkbase@email.chop.edu
Figure 1: Age breakdown for total population
Figure 2: Top 25 Drugs based on Patient Exposure
Figure 3: Drug Utilization of Acetaminophen by Month, in the year 2001, stratified by Age Group
Figure 4: Top 25 Drugs by Exposure Stratified by Age Group : Acetaminophen
Figure 5: Most Frequently used Drugs by Administration
Figure 6: Most Frequently Administered Drugs by Sex: Acetaminophen
