Journal Club: Identifying interventions that improve medication safety & rational use of medicines

A recent study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research published by Scientific Scholar states, patient engagement inclined with the top research priorities on research into the safe use of medicines.

Medication-related harm is known to be the cause for about 1/10th of hospitalizations. Some estimates from India show that about 90 per cent of medicines consumed are inessential or irrational and contribute towards high out-of-pocket expenditure on health. In this context, the Indian Council of Medical Research in 2022 constituted a National Task Force (NTF) to explore possible solutions that could improve safe and rational use of medicines (SRUMs).

The objective of this study was to identify research ideas in the field of SRUM through a survey of relevant stakeholders, and further to prioritize the research ideas using a pre-identified set of criteria.

The responses were assessed using the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative method. The final output of the prioritization process was a list of research ideas or questions, ranked by their scores.

Total 209 unique ideas were received from 190 respondents, which were scored by 27 experts. The top three research topics on medication safety focused on cost-effective strategies for improving antimicrobial stewardship, safe use of poly-pharmacy in geriatric patients and drug take-back policy interventions.

Regarding the rational use of medicine, the top three topics included testing mobile application-based antimicrobial stewardship interventions, development of diagnostics for antimicrobial resistance, and behavioural interventions.

Therefore, the authors interpreted that several priority ideas found in this study also align with those of global priority, e.g., Safe disposal practices and enhanced pharmacovigilance, rational use of medicines.

Patient engagement, which underlines many of the top scoring ideas found in this study, is also inclined with the top research priorities reported by the WHO priority exercise on research into the safe use of medicines.

Hence, the findings of this research priority-setting exercise can help to guide research for the development of policy-relevant and novel interventions to improve SRUM in India.