by brant bullard | Mar 10, 2014 | Journal articles, News
With the increasing need for personalized medicine, pharmacists are beginning to embrace pharmacogenetics. And with continued education, they will have the capacity to improve patients’ lives.
The age of pharmacogenetics has arrived. Pharmacists are taking notice and using this information to help determine which patients require specific treatments, to guide dosage selection, and to predict how patients will respond to therapy.
“After decades of research, pharmacogenetics is moving from research into routine clinical practice,” said James Hoffman, PharmD, MS, BCPS, medication outcomes and safety officer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. “Pharmacists can help lead the way.”
Dr. Hoffman spoke about how pharmacists can better harness the power of pharmacogenetics at the American Pharmacists Association Annual Meeting and Exposition in Los Angeles, California.
He pointed out that more than 100 drug labels now provide pharmacogenetic information, and the US Food and Drug Administration uses genetic information in safety warnings, such as the recent boxed warning for codeine use in children.
Genetic tests are not being used as much as they could be to help decide on drugs and doses, Dr. Hoffman explained. However, the fact that we can now “genotype 225 genes relevant to drug metabolism for the cost of 1 or 2 single gene tests” will likely lead to increased use, he noted.
The first step to increasing pharmacist involvement in pharmacogenetics is to reduce existing knowledge gaps. “There is a need for more active learning experiences, such as continuing education and continuing professional development, to demonstrate the utility of pharmacogenetic principles in a variety of disciplines,” she said. “It was not surprising to discover in my preliminary results that only 9% of respondents had completed any continuing education related to pharmacogenetics.” Pharmacists who want to be more involved, and even those who are unsure, need to actively seek out educational experiences.
Pharmacists with access to pharmacogenetic information should use it when recommending changes to a patient’s drug therapy. “Many community pharmacists were able to identify the appropriate tests required for various drugs, but the majority struggled with modifying drug regimens when provided with pharmacogenetic data,” Dr. Ammons explained. Increased documentation is essential to provide pharmacists and other healthcare providers with a foundation for the application of such information.
Both Dr. Ammons and Dr. Hoffman point out that education and collaboration are critical to getting pharmacists involved in pharmacogenetics. With more knowledge, they will have the capacity to improve patients’ lives.
Read entire article at Medscape.com
by brant bullard | Mar 10, 2014 | Partners
At PGx Medical, we are passionate about what we do and helping not only the senior community, but health care professionals in determining the right medication, right dose, for the right patient.
And we feel it is important to spread the word and support other partners who support what we do.
Welcome:
Senior Housing Forum
About Senior Housing Forum:
Senior Housing Forum is a website that is focused on publishing articles that are of interest to developers and operators of senior living communities.
There are 6 fundamental principals behind Senior Housing Forum
1. We are Not Primarily a News Source – There are already several great free and paid sites that provide current senior living news, we are more focused on asking two questions:
- What does it mean?
- How will it impact the industry?
2. We Question Everything – The thing that gets industries and businesses into trouble more than anything else is assuming they way things worked before (something that may in itself be an assumption that is not true) will continue to work. We ask hard questions and tackle difficult issues.
3. We Love Comments – It is of course great fun to get comments that agree with what our writers say, but we love contrary positions even more. It is those comments that make the industry better.
4. We Don’t Moderate Comments – If you write a comment it will get published (unless of course it is SPAM and we have a pretty good filter for that.) Since we published our first article we have not removed more than one or two comments and never removed a comment because the opinion was contrary.
5. We Are Curious People – All of the regular writers are very curious people who know they don’t know it all. We are always learning and challenging our own assumptions.
6. We are Not Perfect – Because of this we welcome comments, suggestions and criticisms and corrections of typos.
Finding Your Way Around
There are currently five content areas at Senior Housing Forum
1. Featured Articles
Featured articles are mostly original content written specifically for Senior Housing Forum. Though occasionally we will republish an article we really like from another site (always with permission). We are currently publishing four to ten featured articles per week. Unless the article is an announcement the ability to comment will always be turned on.
2. News From Around The Web
The right side column features articles we think would be of interest to senior living professionals. Many will be directly related to senior living and others will be cross industry articles on management, marketing and human relations. And finally, occasionally they will be something that is just for fun.
3. Job Board
At this point the job board is not super active but it is free to post or respond to jobs and is provided as free service to readers by Senior Housing Forum
4. Calendar
The Calendar features mostly national events that are of interest to the senior living community. If you have something you would like to have added, shoot me an email.
5. Banner Ads/Partners
Part of what makes Senior Housing Forum work is a group of partners that provide products and services to the senior living industry. The way or partner program works is that we periodically write articles that talk about how the partners help improve the lives of seniors by helping senior living providers do a better job of caring for seniors.
As we write these articles the goal is of course to promote partners but also to give you ideas that will assist your business even if you never use the partners services or products.
If you are a vendor and are interested in becoming a partner email Steve Moran
More On Commenting
While we welcome all comments there are a few common sense rules we ask everyone to observe:
- No content that is obscene or offensive.
- If the content is completely unrelated to the discussion. This means blatant unrelated product or service promotion, it will be removed. We call this SPAM of course.
The Blog Publisher
My name is Steve Moran and I publish Senior Housing Forum. I live in the Sacramento, California area.
I stumbled into senior housing in the 1980′s shortly after graduating from college. I have developed and operated a number of assisted living communities and multiple levels of care campuses.
I took a 10 year detour into the world of high tech but returned to senior living in 2011.
In addition to publishing Senior Housing Forum I am an account manager for Vigil Health Solutions where we provide the finest emergency call systems for independent living, assisted living, skilled living and dementia units. (www.vigil.com)Steve
smoran@seniorhousingforum.net
by brant bullard | Mar 6, 2014 | Metabolic Validation Program
Facts: Older Adults and Medicine Use
- Older adults comprise 13 percent of the population, but account for 34 percent of all prescription medicine use and 30 percent of all over-the-counter (OTC) drug use.
- Most older adults — 4 out of 5 — live with one or more chronic conditions.
- Many take multiple medicines at the same time. A recent survey of 17,000 Medicare beneficiaries found that 2 out of 5 patients reported taking five or more prescription medicines.
- Older adults are at increased risk of serious adverse drug events, including falls, depression, confusion, hallucinations and malnutrition, which are an important cause of illness, hospitalization and death among these patients.
- Drug-related complications have been attributed to the use of multiple medicines and associated drug interactions, age-related changes, human error and poor medical management (e.g., incorrect medicines prescribed, inappropriate doses, lack of communication and monitoring).
- Almost 40% of seniors are unable to read prescription label, and 67% are unable to understand information given to them.
Reference: Mustforseniors
For information on the PGx Metabolic Validation Program, contact:
PGx Medical
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
by brant bullard | Mar 3, 2014 | News
Medicines cure infectious diseases, prevent problems from chronic diseases, and alleviate pain and suffering for millions of Americans every day. But medicines can also cause harm.
Adverse drug events cause over 700,000 emergency department visits each year. Nearly 120,000 patients each year need to be hospitalized for further treatment after emergency visits for adverse drug events. As more and more people take more medicines, the risk of adverse events may increase.
As people age, they typically take more medicines. Older adults (65 years or older) are twice as likely as others to come to emergency departments for adverse drug events (over 177,000 emergency visits each year) and nearly seven times more likely to be hospitalized after an emergency visit.
Anti-psychotics are frequently prescribed when people have dementia. For some, a light dose may just be the right thing, but one medication doesn’t suit all elder issues.
One of the largest segments of the older population treated with antipsychotics is dementia patients with psychosis. One half of patients with dementia have comorbid psychosis. There are over 4 million people with Alzheimer disease in the United States today, and that number is expected to increase to 15 million in another 20 years. Just imagine one half of them having psychosis.
Wouldn’t it be helpful to know if the medications you are giving your patients are effective? How do you know if their body metabolizes the medications or if there are adverse drug reactions with the combinations of medications?
Pharmacogenetic testing is a type of genetic test that assesses a patient’s risk of adverse response or likelihood to respond to a given drug, informing drug selection and dosing. It is personalizing medicine for each patient.
If you would like more information regarding our Metabolic Validation Program through pharmacogenetic testing, contact:
PGx Medical
Empowerment at the Source of Treatment
info@pgxmed.com
405-509-5112
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
Reference: cdcgov.com, Medscape.com
by brant bullard | Feb 19, 2014 | News
Personalized Medicine for each Individual Patient
It is evident that both pharmacogenomics and individualized drug therapy are increasingly influencing medicine and biomedical research in many areas, including clinical medicine, drug development, drug regulation, pharmacology, and toxicology.
The term pharmacogenomics refers to the study of how genes affect the way a patient responds to medication. Genomic differences can influence the efficacy of medications and can be the source of serious drug side-effects or drug to drug interactions. Today, there is an evidence based, easy to read report of a patient’s genomic drug profile that will help clinicians and healthcare providers better understand how their patients may react to a medication.
Individualized Care and Personalized Medicine is a shift in medical practice. What worked for a typical patient – to now what works for each individual patient.
For more information, contact:
PGx Medical
Empowerment at the Source of Treatment
Individualized Care – Personalized Medicine
405-509-5112
info@pgxmed.com
www.pgxmed.com
