Using pharmacogenetics knowledge to increase accuracy of alerts for adverse drug events

Abstract

Adverse drug event (ADE) has significant implications on patient safety and is recognized as a major cause of fatalities and hospital expenses. Although some medical systems today can help reduce the number of ADE occurrences, these primarily take into account clinical factors-even though recent studies show the significance of genetic profiles in ADE detection. Incorporating pharmacogenetics knowledge and data from genetic test results into these systems can improve the accuracy of preliminary alerts about potential ADEs. However, pharmacogenetics knowledge is unstructured, making it inappropriate for use in a system that involves automatic processing. We propose a methodology that can help incorporate the pharmacogenetics knowledge. Specifically, we show how pharmacogenetics knowledge can be expressed in a medical system and used together with the patient genetic data to provide alerts about ADEs at the point of care.