College Funds SFU Research Initiative to Reduce ADR-Related Visits to Emergency Departments

Back to list

College Funds SFU Research Initiative to Reduce ADR-Related Visits to Emergency Departments

The College of Pharmacists of BC is pleased to contribute funding to a new health research initiative by Simon Fraser University (SFU). Pill Talk aims to reduce visits to hospital emergency departments due to adverse drug events with the development of an enhanced PharmaNet-based reporting platform that will improve adverse drug reaction reporting.

“The College is proud to support research initiatives that will improve patient health outcomes,” said College Registrar Bob Nakagawa. “Pill Talk will help thousands of pharmacists and their patients by capturing critical information on adverse drug reactions.”

The College provided SFU with $315,000 to complete the project. SFU also received additional funding from other partners, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s eHealth Innovations Partership Program (eHIPP).

Pill Talk is an enhanced PharmaNet-based adverse drug event reporting platform that will improve patient safety and adverse drug reaction reporting.

Adverse drug events accounts for 12 per cent of emergency visits.

“That’s more than 200,000 visits in BC annually, incurring costs of approximately $90 million,” says Ellen Balka, project lead for Pill Talk.

As many as one third of preventable adverse drug events could be avoided by implementing Pill Talk reporting fields in PharmaNet, and will save as much as $18 million annually.

For more information on Pill Talk, please see the SFU news release.

For more information on eHIPP, please see the CIHR news release

Mar 11, 2016