The International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology awarded University of Florida College of Pharmacy graduate student Nakyung Jeon second place for best student abstract out of 419 submissions at the International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology and Therapeutic Risk Management, held Aug. 25-29 in Dublin, Ireland. Jeon, a fifth-year student in the department of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy, accepted the award on behalf of a team of UF researchers developing automated prediction models for preventable adverse drug events in hospitalized patients.
Researchers are using data from electronic health records at UF Health hospitals to develop a risk score model to predict which hospitalized patients on nephrotoxic medications are at the highest risk for developing acute kidney injury. Within those ranked in the top 10 percent of the score, the model can correctly identify about half of all patients who will develop acute kidney injury during their hospital stay. Because the model is designed to run in real time, the research group hopes that clinicians will be alerted early enough to implement interventions such as adequate hydration, discontinuation or dose adjustment of nephrotoxic medications and routine serum creatinine monitoring as possible strategies for preventing acute kidney injury.
Funding for the study was provided by the American Society for Health-System Pharmacists Research Foundation. Almut Winterstein, a professor and chair of the department of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy, is the principal investigator on the grant.