Improving Primary Care in Older Patients: a Focus on Safe and Appropriate Medications

Seniors take many medications during their lifetime. As seniors age, some of these medications may become unnecessary or even harmful. The process of stopping a medication that has the potential to cause more harm than benefit is called deprescribing. Physicians are more in the habit of prescribing than deprescribing, even though patients like the idea of getting off some of their pills if they can. The goal of this project is to use technology to support physicians in the deprescribing process. We intend to create a new program in the Omnimed electronic medical record system that will remind physicians to deprescribe, will provide them with tools and education on deprescribing, and that will automatically send patients educational material on drug safety. We will evaluate the utility of the software by tracking how many patients end up discontinuing unnecessary medication. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Cara Tannenbaum

Student:

Justin Turner

Partner:

Omnimed

Discipline:

Pharmacy / Pharmacology

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Program: