Grant: Project Grant

Prescription drugs play an expanding and essential role in preventing and treating chronic health problems. However, medications are currently not as beneficial as they could be. This is due to little information on their safety and effectiveness after approval for sale. It is also difficult to personalize treatment to a particular patient and to guide physicians when prescribing medications. Personalizing treatment is important because patients with the same medical conditions do not always benefit equally from the same medications. Patients' experiences often differ based on demographic, genetic, and clinical factors. A patient of a certain age, sex, genetic profile, and medical history may benefit from a medication that harms a patient with different traits. Many factors that affect response to therapy are known, but even more are not. It can also be difficult for physicians to account for every factor when prescribing medications. Our research team proposes the following: 1.To use a wealth of information from hospital, pharmacy, and provincial sources to develop predictive algorithms to personalize therapy. Our algorithms will identify factors that affect patient response to treatment and will predict, for a single patient, the risks and benefits of using different medications. 2.To develop computer-based tools that use these algorithms and help physicians make decisions when prescribing medications. 3.To conduct clinical trials to find out if these tools improve treatment and patients' health.