Pharmacoepidemiology: An Introduction, Applications and Opportunities

Pharamacoepidemiology combines methodology from epidemiology and clinical pharmacology to study the use, effectiveness, value, and safety of pharmaceuticals. This seminar will 1) provide a brief introduction to the field of pharmacoepidemiology, with an emphasis on methodologic considerations, 2) show examples of pharmacoepidemiologic research conducted at UMN, and 3) discuss data availability and opportunities to conduct pharmacoepidemiologic research at UMN. Example applications using the MarketScan and Medicare 20% sample data sources will focus on cardiovascular research questions. An example using the Fairview electronic health record data will be presented by Yu-Chia (Sam) Hsu, MSc, PharmD, who is a PhD student in the College of Pharmacy. Specifically, he will share his work evaluating post-operative opioid prescription dosing and risk of opioid use disorder. The presentation will also review the strengths and limitations of pharmacoepidemiology in terms of causal inference, and of the available data sources.