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Drug Reaction |
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Drug Reaction and Patient Safety to be Focus of Upcoming ‘WARM’
Summit, Workshop on Adverse Response Monitoring
Other topics:
Automatic Patient Tracking
The WARM Summit
February 20, 2008
Ottawa, Canada -- The WARM
Summit, a Canadian-led, international initiative to improve
patient safety, is taking place in Ottawa on February 21 – 22,
2008. With the focus on health risks from taking prescribed
medications, the workshop will bring together experts from
medicine, science, engineering, business and government to find
objective methods of measuring patient responses to medications
and to develop standards for adverse response measurement and
analysis. The panel will produce a report and recommendations to
improve patient safety and to help optimize the efficacy of
medication.
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Organized by the Ottawa Section of IEEE, the workshop will
feature representatives from Ottawa Heart Institute, Johns
Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratories, the University of Toronto,
and European Federation of Medical Informatics, and delegates
from Health Canada, among others. In addition, the workshop is
sponsored by the healthcare divisions of IBM and TELUS, along
with Emergis (a TELUS company focused on health information
management).
"Engineering shares with medicine a commitment to improve
quality of life while putting safety first, and that's why the
IEEE is organizing this workshop. On this common ground, we will
seek to work out the differences and identify the cross-cutting
technologies that can bridge the gap between physical and
physiological safety systems," said Dr. Wahab Almuhtadi, IEEE
Ottawa Section Chair.
Drug adverse responses need better standards for monitoring and
reporting:
“Despite the well-known risks associated with using prescription
drugs, medication errors and adverse reactions are still poorly
understood and recorded. Given these risks, we need to develop
objective methods for monitoring an individual’s response to
treatment,” said George Mihalas, President of the European
Federation of Medical Informatics.
Although in Canada (outside of Quebec), between 2006 – 2007,
there were over 45,000 adverse reactions to medication reported
– or approximately 22 of every 1000 people were hospitalized due
to drug reactions – there is still no standardized method to
monitor and report these reactions.
Most medications today are administered by patients at home,
without supervision, and in the absence of systems to manage and
track adverse drug responses. Many patients experience
complications from prescribed drugs – often severe – adding to
the challenges of managing chronic conditions like heart disease
and diabetes.
“Is this treatment working for me? That is the question in
health care. Without a precise answer to this question, knowing
what’s going on with a patient imposes unbearable costs of
cognition, communication, coordination, and capability. Personal
health monitoring systems are needed to help answer this
question efficiently and therefore enable the provision of safe,
high-quality care for all,” said Dr. Radu Leca, President of
Biosign Technologies Inc.
A demonstration of how technology can help:
As part of the WARM Summit, technologies to be demonstrated
include a telematic health information system for monitoring
responses to frequently prescribed drugs. The system, developed
by Biosign, leverages established technologies to assess a
patient’s response to treatment and the need to adjust treatment
accordingly. Its networking and communication facilities are
being tested on TELUS and IBM platforms.
“IBM supports and applauds this initiative, which addresses
challenging questions in the quest for high-quality healthcare.
Ensuring that people are not harmed by medication is not an
option, but the first condition of quality care. That’s why we
are working closely with TELUS and Biosign to offer a
prescription for action,” said Sal Causi, IBM Healthcare’s
Business Development Executive.
"TELUS is pleased to support this IEEE workshop's goal of
improving patient safety through the use of technology. This is
an extension of our ongoing collaboration with IBM and Biosign.
The strategy to commoditize self care and remote monitoring is
critical as we move toward next-generation healthcare," said
Ibrahim Gedeon, TELUS' Chief Technology Officer.
The WARM Summit will take place at Nepean Centrepointe, Ben
Franklin Place, 101 Centrepointe Drive, Ottawa, Ontario Canada.
The Summit begins at 8:00am EST on Thursday February 21st and
runs until 6:30pm EST on February 22nd. |
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