Pharmacoepidemiological approaches in health care

Abstract

Pharmacoepidemiology studies the utilization patterns of medicines-also known as drug utilization research-which is an important component of pharmacy practice research. Pharmacoepidemiology also studies the relationship between medicines or other medical treatments and outcomes in large populations under nonexperimental situations. Providing an introduction to pharmacoepidemiology, this chapter describes frequently used metrics to understand drug utilization and medication adherence. This chapter also covers the key concepts involved in studying the association between medical or surgical treatments and outcomes. These concepts include forming a research question, selecting sources of data, defining the study population, and defining drug exposures, covariates, and outcomes. The chapter also discusses a range of study designs used in pharmacoepidemiologic research, including, but not limited to, cohort studies, case-control studies, within-subject studies, cross-sectional studies, ecological studies, and quasi-experimental designs. Finally, the chapter draws on key challenges such as confounding bias as well as commonly used analytical techniques to overcome these challenges.