Polypharmacy in chronic diseases

Reduction of Inappropriate Medication and Adverse drug events in elderly populations by electronic Decision Support

Universities

Witten/Herdecke University (UW/H), Germany

The Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine is a department of the University of Witten/Herdecke, situated in Witten, Germany. The university is committed to patient care, medical education and health research of the highest standard with a special focus on integrated care, personalized medicine, and public health. The mission of the university is to improve health and healthcare as well in the Witten region as at the national and international level. There is a strong collaboration with many other institutions in Germany and worldwide.

Andreas C. Sönnichsen MD, Prof. of General Practice and Family Medicine, is director of the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine at UWH and a practicing clinician at a large GP surgery. A.S. is the project leader of PRIMA-eDS. He is a GP with specialization in research in primary care, chronic care, implementation of evidence based medicine in general practice, disease management, patient safety, quality improvement and health technology assessment.

Ulrike S. Trampisch, Dr. Sportwiss. (Sport Science) and M.Sc. (Epidemiology), is a research fellow at the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine at UWH.

Anne-Lisa Teichmann, B.Sc. (Health Communication) is a research assistant at the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine at UWH and M.A student of Health Management.

Barbara Faller, MD, is a research fellow at the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine at UWH and general practitioner.

Anja Rieckert, MMSc (Public Health), is a research assistant and PhD student at the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine at UWH.

Anke Schnabel is member of the project management team and supports project management activities, financial management and administration.

Sabine Weissbach is a research assistant and study nurse with experience in research projects focused on polypharmacy.

Lisa Lechterbeck, MSE (Epidemiology), is a PhD student at the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine at UWH.

University of Manchester (UNIMAN), UK

The University of Manchester (UNIMAN) was created in 2004 by bringing together The Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST, two of Britain’s most distinguished universities. The University already holds the global reputation of being at the forefront of innovative and enterprising research. The Primary Care Research Group is one of the most research active group of its kind in the UK, was rated as one of the top 5 research groups in primary care in the UK at the last research assessment exercise in 2008. The group carries out research in primary care mental health, long term conditions and quality and safety in primary care.

Aneez Esmail MRCGP, FRCP, MFHPM, PhD is a Professor of General Practice and a practising clinician. He is currently the Associate Vice-President for Social Responsibility at the University of Manchester, a position that he holds in addition to his clinical and research and teaching responsibilities. His main areas of research are patient safety in primary care and inequalities in health care related to ethnicity. He collaborates internationally on issues related to patient safety in primary care. He leads Linneaus Euro-PC Collaboration (http://www.linneaus-pc.eu/) and is the Director of the Manchester Patient Safety Translational Centre (http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/primarycare/research/qualityandsafety/MATRiC/).

David Reeves BA PhD is a Reader in Statistics and Lead Statistician in the Primary Care Research Group. DR has extensive experience of designing and analyzing pragmatic RCTs in primary care, including interventions for both patients and GPs. His main areas of research concern patient self-management, quality of care for long-term conditions, analysis of large-scale patient record databases and meta-analysis. He sits on the committee of the Primary Care Group of the Royal Statistical Society and collaborates internationally on methodological and applied studies around quality of care and patient self-management.

Annette Barber is the Project Manager in the UK for PRIMA-eDS.  Her previous experience includes project management on the University of Manchester led Linneaus Euro-PC Collaboration (http://www.linneaus-pc.eu/) for patient safety in primary care. Other experience includes developing the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), a project working with NICE developing the United Kingdom wide pay for performance framework for primary care.  Her other project roles include the Quality and Outcomes framework(QOF) Consensus process in 2007, the NPCRDC/Royal College of General Practitioners  Primary Medical Care Provider Accreditation Scheme (PMCPA) pilot which involved piloting various general practice surgeries in England and the  GP Satisfaction Surveys 2004, 2005 & 2008 funded by the Department of Health

Adrine Woodham is a Research Associate for PRIMA-eDS. Her previous primary care research experience concerns physical activity referral.  Prior to that she worked on studies in adolescent and adult psychiatry.

Angela Swallow is the study monitor for PRIMA-eDS in the UK. She has worked on several other primary care studies covering quality audit, chronic conditions and diagnosis of cancer decision rules.

Vicky Bell is a Research Associate for PRIMA-eDS. Vicky's previous research experience comes from her roles at the University and the National Institute for Health Research, where she has worked on a large number of studies in mental health and primary care.

Charles Adeniji is a Research Associate for PRIMA-eDS. His previous primary care research experience concerns 'multimorbidity' and patient's experience in NHS. Charles is a general practitioner in Nigeria and is also an International Training Fellow in the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Hospital, UK.

Universitätsmedizin Rostock (UMR), Germany

The Institute of General Practice is a department of the University Medical Center Rostock at Rostock University – one of the oldest universities in the northern part of Europe. The Institute of General Practice was founded in 2009.

Attila Altiner MD, PhD, is Professor of General Practice and Director of the Institute of General Practice at the University Medical Center Rostock. He has extensive expertise in the development of electronic decision support tools (arriba) with a special focus on usability. Attila Altiner is coordinating researcher of several large scale cluster-randomized trials addressing the optimization of pharmacotherapy in the field of respiratory tract infections, cardiovascular prevention, diabetes, and multimorbidity.

Christin Löffler, PhD, is a sociologist at the Institute of General Practice at the Rostock University Medical Center. Her methodological focuses include qualitative and quantitative research methods. She is engaged in several explorative studies and RCTs addressing multimorbidity, polypharmacy, and rural health. Christin Löffler is currently on parental leave.

Jennifer Höck is a psychologist at the Institute of General Practice at the Rostock University Medical Center since 2011. Her research interests include diagnostic and interventional approaches focusing on chronic pain management and polypharmacy.

Eva Drewelow is a sociologist at the Institute of General Practice at the Rostock University Medical Center since 2011. Her research focusses on multimorbidity, diabetes and the optimization of pharmacotherapy in primary care.

Kathrin Ertzinger is a sociologist and study assistant at the Institute of General Practice at the Rostock University Medical Center since 2013.

Matthias Bohn is a medical documentalist and study assistant at the Institute of General Practice at the Rostock University Medical Center since 2013.

Silke Stellmacher is a sociology student and works at the Institute of General Practice at the Rostock University Medical Center since 2011.

Julia Köhler is a biological-technical assistant and study nurse at the Institute of General Practice at the Rostock University Medical Center. She works as a site monitor in PRIMA-eDS.

Antje Bever, M.A., is a research assistant at the Institute of General Practice and works as a site monitor in PRIMA-eDS.

South Tyrolean Academy for General Practice – SAGP, Italy

The SAGP is an independent institute with the juridical status of a foundation, located in Bolzano, Alto Adige/Südtirol, Italy. It was founded in 2004 and is the only institute of higher education and research in the field of general practice in Alto Adige/Südtirol. Furhter, it is one of the very few of it´s kind in Italy.

Adolf Engl, MD, General Practitioner, is the President of  SAGP. His interests and scientific expertise cover vocational training and continuous medical education for GPs, as well as research  in the field of general practice especially regarding chronic care, elderly patients, the relationship between patient andphysician, and psychosomatics. He also has a long experience in rest-home-medicine, and with teaching medical studentsfor the universities of Düsseldorf, Graz and Innsbruck.

Giuliano Piccoliori, MD, General Practitioner, is the Directorof  SAGP. He isresponsible for the organization and the contents of the vocational training in general practice in Alto Adige/Südtirol. His expertise comprises research about chronic disease, elderly patients, polypharmacy, the development of IT tools for GP- practice- software and the treatment of pain in ambulatory care.

Anna Vögele, MD, General Practitioner, is a Research Fellow of SAGP.Her fields of interest, clinical and reseach work cover nutritional medicine, patient and medication safety, elderly patients, preventive medicine  and polypharmacy.

Martina Valentini, Psychologist and Psychotherapist, is a Research Fellow of SAGP. She has experience with research in polypharmacy and elderly patients.

Marialuise  Obexer is the Office Manager of SAGP. She is in charge of administrative tasks within the project, the  the  financial management and administration.

Paracelsus Medical University (PMU), Austria

The Institute of General Practice, Family Medicine and Preventive Medicine (IGP) is a department of Paracelsus Medical University (PMU), situated in Salzburg, Austria. The university is committed to patient care, medical education and health research of the highest standard with a special focus on diabetes and metabolic disease, public health, oncology, cellular physiology and structural anatomy of joints. The mission of the university is to improve health and healthcare as well in the Salzburg region as at the national and international level.

Maria Flamm MD, MPH, is the director of the Institute of General Practice, Family Medicine and Preventive Medicine of PMU. She is qualified in medicine (GP) and public health with a focus in the research area health services research and chronic care. She led the Austrian work package on disease management evaluation in the FP7 project DISMEVAL. She evaluated the quality of care in diabetes mellitus type 2 in Austria, the economic impact of a DMP and is experienced in evaluation of eDS tools (evaluation of “PROP” in the field of preoperative diagnostics).

Tim Johansson, PhD, MSSc in Public Health, leads the PRIMA-eDS project in Austria for. He has extensive experience carrying out systematic reviews from his work at PMU and from his previous position as research fellow at the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Health Technology Assessment in Vienna. He also is experienced in the design and conduction of randomized controlled trials.

Celine Kriechmayr, MSSc, is a member of the staff of the Institute of General Practice, Family Medicine, and Preventive Medicine at PMU. She finished her studies in Sociology with a special focus on the sociology of health. In her master thesis she evaluated the effectiveness of therapy interventions for psychosomatic disorders (chronical pain and eating disorders). She has experience in collecting and analysing data on population based trials such as “Healthy Community”.

Sophie Keller, PhD, Dipl.-Ing. (FH), is a member of the staff of the Institute of General Practice, Family Medicine, and Preventive Medicine at PMU. She has experience in randomized controlled trials (RCT) and just finished her doctoral thesis about the impact of peer support on diabetes mellitus (funded by the BRIDGES-programme of the International Diabetes Federation).

Jochen Schuler, MD, cardiologist, is a member of the staff of the Institute of General Practice, Family Medicine, and Preventive Medicine at PMU. He is a specialist in patient safety and particularly in medication safety. He has been medication-safety-advisor for the university hospital of PMU for several years, and did important work on hospital admissions due to medication errors and polypharmacy.

Eva Mann, MD, general practitioner and geriatrician, senior lecturer member of the staff of the Institute of General Practice, Family Medicine, and Preventive Medicine at PMU. She has expertise in medical care of outpatient geriatric patients and nursing home patients since more than 20 years. As a geriatric researcher she conducted nursing home based epidemiological studies. Her main research topics include dementia, dementia-related neuropsychiatric symptoms, and inappropriate psychotropic medication in nursing home patients. She took part in the development of the German PRISCUS list and developed the Austrian PIM list. As a first author and co-author, respectively, she published a comparison of inappropriate medications in nursing home residents between these two countries. She also was involved in three systematic review e.g. tools for assessment of appropriate hospital admissions of nursing home residents.

 

Duodecim Medical Publications Ltd. (DMP), Finland

DMP  (www.duodecimpublications.com) is the largest Nordic medical publisher. It is the publishing house of the Finnish Medical Society Duodecim, the scientific society of Finnish physicians established in 1881. The main products of DMP are health portals for professionals and for citizens, EBM Guidelines, a comprehensive point-of-care guideline collection that has been translated into 8 languages, and the EBMeDS clinical decision support service (www.ebmeds.org).

Ilkka Kunnamo, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of EBM Guidelines and EBMeDS at Duodecim Medical Publications Ltd., developed the original idea of Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines (www.duodecim.fi/web/duodecimpublications/ebmg), and has been its editor-in-chief since 1988. In 2003 he started developing the  EBMeDS decision support servive.  General practitioner at the Health Centre of Karstula in Central Finland since 1986. Adjunct Professor of general practice at the University of Helsinki since 2009. Member of the international GRADE Group, and co-chair of Guidelines International Network Multimorbidity Working Group.

Peter Nyberg, MD, PhD,  a physician with a PhD in occupational medicine. Since 1994 he has been involved in medical informatics and the development of computer systems for health care. Currently he is the Development Manager of the EBMeDS decision support system.

Pirkko Paakkari, MD, PhD, chief editor of the Duodecim Drug Database. 

Minna Marttila-Vaara, MD, PhD, specialist of internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University Hospital of Oulu. She did her PhD in 1999 on molecular markers of cardiac hypertrophy and cardiovascular research is her main research interest.  She works as a clinician editor developing EBMeDS since 2010.

Rasmus Paetau, MD, is a GP with a keen interest in improving the utilization of IT within healthcare. He has been working with Duodecim Medical Publications on the EBMeDS decision support system since 2008.

Jukkapekka Jousimaa, MD, PhD, Editor-in Chief of EBM Guidelines (EBMG) Finnish version and related databases in Terveysportti Health Portal at Duodecim Medical Publications Ltd.  A member of the EBMG team since 1989. Doctoral thesis on the information needs of primary care physicians was published in 2001. Specialist in general practice and occupational health care; currently part-time private practitioner.

Tuomas Koskela, MD, PhD, physician editor at Duodecim Medical Publications, EBMeDS, researcher, clinical lecturer, general practicioner from Tampere, Finland. Responsible for a qualitative pilot study of eDS tool in Tampere, Finland

Johannes Lyytikkä, MD, physician editor at Duodecim Medical Publications, EBMeDS since 2013

Timo Haikonen, MSc, international director , monitors and coordinates the Finnish contribution of the project. Heads the international adaptation of clinical decision support system (EBMeDS) via commercial partners.

Joonas Mäkinen, MSc, system specialist for EBMeDS decision support. Participates in the design and development of the technical solutions for the study. Prior to joining Duodecim he has worked in research projects focused in healthcare informatics at the University of Tampere, Finland.

Pekka Kuosmanen, Chief Executive Officer, Avain Technologies Ltd.

Aydin Göcer, Senior Product Manager, Avain Technologies Ltd.