Grant: Team Grant: DSEN Coll Centre for Prospective Studies -Comparative Effectiveness

Medication use and health care costs increase steadily with the aging of the Canadian society and the ever increasing number of medications available on the market. Overall, new drugs and treatments contribute to the improvement of population health and increasing life expectancy. However, it is not always clear which of the alternative medications currently in use in practice for a given disease offer the biggest benefits to patients. Thus, the evaluation of comparative effectiveness and safety of treatments is a top priority for both the health research and the society at large. However, accurate comparisons of benefits and risks of different medications require state-of-the-art scientific methods. Our inter-disciplinary team of researchers from 7 Canadian provinces will combine a wide range of scientific expertise. With this highly qualified team we aim to establish Canada as an international leader in comparative effectiveness research. Our new methods will help efficient identification of adverse effects and accurate comparison of therapeutic effectiveness of alternative medications used to treat many diseases. This, in turn, will permit optimizing drug prescribing practice, to minimize the risks and maximize therapeutic benefits.