Dr. Corinne Hohl, an Associate Professor with the UBC Department of Emergency Medicine and Dr. Ellen Balka, a University Professor with SFU’s School of Communication received a major $662,550 CIHR grant to support their co-led research project on reducing adverse drug events, the harmful and unintended consequences of medications.
Adverse drug events are a leading cause of hospital and emergency department admissions, accounting for 12% of all emergency visits. Every year in B.C., adverse drug events cause more than 200,000 ED visits and cost approximately $90 million.
Yet, up to 70% of adverse drug events are consistently identified as preventable, with 30% occurring simply because health care providers re-prescribe and re-dispense culprit drugs — without knowing those drugs previously caused harm.
Dr Hohl and Dr. Balka’s project involves designing and implementing a software application, called “Pill Talk,” to promote better documentation, reporting and communication of adverse drug events.
Following an earlier Partnerships in Health Systems Improvement grant from CIHR, Hohl and Balka’s recently received funding from CIHR’s eHealth Innovations Partnership Program to implement and evaluate the Pill Talk software application over the next four years, with additional cash and in kind contributions from PHEMI, Vancouver Coastal Health, the B.C. college of Pharmacists and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Numerous other organizations are also collaborating.
For more information, contact:
Dr. Corinne Hohl, BSc, MDCM, FRCP (C), MHSc
chohl@mail.ubc.ca
604.875.4111 ext. 63467