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erlenmyer-research
Research group/lab

Pharmacy: Medication Optimization and Safety

About our research group/lab

Our research

This research line focuses on enhancing pharmacotherapy across various care settings, prioritizing safety, especially in underexplored populations like the elderly and females. A primary focus is (re)hospitalization prevention through deprescribing and clinical decision support systems. We also emphasize sustainability, aiming to reduce the ecological impact of pharmaceutical care and explore economic strategies like hybrid dosing and medication reuse.

Education forms the core of our work, linking to other research areas. We believe teaching is pivotal in boosting prescribers' efficacy, promoting collaborative practices, and advancing medication safety by allowing us to bring novel insights and solutions arising from our research to current and future healthcare professionals. Our research also explores innovative educational methods and topics. Sustainability and resource optimization are now integral components of our educational endeavors. Another aspect is assessing diversity among healthcare professionals to improve overall healthcare quality.

This research line is led by dr. Jorie Versmissen (Assoc. Prof.) and dr. Floor van Rosse (Assoc. Prof.) in collaboration with 1 professor, 1 associate professor, 3 assistant professors, and 4 post-docs.

Targets for the future

Promote real-world research through smarter decision support and education that lead to safe, sustainable, and efficient pharmaceutical care.

Clinical decision-making, a crucial domain in healthcare, is evolving towards a data-driven approach. This change is driven by the growing volume of real-world data and enhanced computing power, enabling the use of advanced analysis methods.

This shift is particularly crucial, given the notable discrepancies observed between clinical trial outcomes and real-world data, e.g. in the context of comorbidities and gender-specific variations. Consequently, there is a need for educational curricula to integrate these emerging technological advancements, with a concerted emphasis on ensuring patient safety and sustainable healthcare practices. This necessitates an increasing reliance on (interprofessional) education to adequately equip healthcare professionals for this evolving landscape.

To keep pharmaceutical care, safe, sustainable, efficient, and patient-aligned, research will focus on: 

  1. Development of clinical decision support utilizing real-world data and advanced research methodologies to identify and prevent AE while reducing hospital readmissions for out-patients by 15% in a randomized study and real-life setting.

  2. Enhance medication safety via (interprofessional) education, digital tools, and patient empowerment assessed through an international randomized study, led by ErasmusMC, demonstrating a 20% decrease in adverse events.

  3. Real-world data of the performance of drugs, with a special focus on cardiovascular side effects of anticancer treatment, piloting at least two interventions to (1) reduce atherosclerosis and (2) prevent hypertension in (former) cancer patients.

Key Publications

Our team

Principal Investigators

Project Leaders

Phd Students