Methods for detecting pediatric adverse drug reactions from the electronic medical record

An adverse drug reaction can be described as any unexpected outcome which occurs following the consumption of a drug. This reaction may occur in the form of a rash, anemia, or a number of other health-related issues. In order to reduce the chances for adverse drug reactions to occur, pharmacovigilance services have been implemented in a number of hospitals across the country including Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. These services work to locate and report drug allergies amongst patients in a database. In the project that I have been working on at the Clinical Pharmacology Division of the Indiana University School of Medicine, we have been mimicking the work of pharmacovigilance services by searching for and documenting adverse drug reactions that occurred at Riley’s Children's Hospital in the year 2019. The purpose of this study is to detect the effectiveness of prospective pharmacovigilance services to determine if these methods could be implemented at other hospitals such as Riley’s. This research project is currently ongoing and is predicted to conclude in the summer of 2021.