Center News
Center members to host unique conference
The UA College of Pharmacy will host a first-of-its-kind national conference Oct. 13 and 14, 2009, on using health information technology (IT) to improve patient safety. The event will be in Rockville, Md., at the Pharmacopeia Meetings Center. The conference is sponsored primarily by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Daniel Malone, a member of the center, led the team that won the grant funding the conference, titled “Generating, Evaluating and Implementing Evidence for Drug-Drug Interactions in Health Information Technology To Improve Patient Safety: A Multi-Stakeholder Conference.”
Follow this link to read more about drug-drug interactions and what will happen at the conference.
Left to right: Conference planners included John Murphy,
Daniel Malone, Grant Skrepnek and Edward Armstrong.
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Jason Hurwitz receives fellowship The PhRMA Foundation awarded the 2009 Post Doctoral Fellowship in Health Outcomes to Jason Hurwitz at the ISPOR 14th Annual International Meeting in Orlando. His research focuses on the outcomes and prevention of injury associated with overdoses from over-the-counter cough and cold/pain and fever medications. This two-year project involves analyzing emergency room and inpatient datasets, and assessing consumers' awareness of the risks of these products, and use of different medication labels and dosing methods to improve their safety. |
Advanced modeling course: "The perfect balance"
The Center for Health Outcomes and PharmacoEconomic Research held its third annual Advanced Course in Pharmacoeconomic Modeling here at the College of Pharmacy Aug. 3-5, 2009.
Fourteen participants attended this 2½-day program that covered topics such as decision and Markov analysis, pobabilistic modeling, mixed treatment comparisons, Bayesian methods, and expected value of perfect information.
Attendees learned how to build and interpret pharmacoeconomic models using Excel software. One advantage of using Excel is that it is widely used and most decision makers have access to the program. This means that the model can easily be manipulated and modified by decision makers, removing the “black box” effect that plagues many existing models.
The course was adapted from techniques Prof. Dan Malone learned during his sabbatical at York University. He worked with Mike Drummond, Mark Sculpher, and Karl Claxton, leading researchers in health technology assessment.
Among the attendees were representatives from the pharmaceutical industry, academia, and managed care. Attendees provided very positive feedback, as illustrated by this quote from James Spalding, PharmD, associate director of health economics and outcomes research at Astellas Pharma US:
"The University of Arizona Advance Modeling Program provided the perfect balance between theory and application. I finished the week with a deeper understanding of the advanced concepts as well as the confidence that I could apply them to my products."
The center plans to hold this program again in August 2010. For more information, contact Amy Grizzle at (520) 626-4721 or grizzle@pharmacy.arizona.edu.
ISPOR meeting includes UA posters
| Two professors, seven students,and two research scientists from the Center for Health Outcomes and Pharmaco-Economic Research attended the 14th Annual International ISPOR Meeting held May 16-20 in Orlando. Four students from the pharmaceutical economics, policy and outcomes graduate program presented posters at the meeting. Follow the links below to their posters. |
“Inpatient Burden of Illness and Predictors of Charges or Lengths of Stay Among Adult Heart Transplantation Patients” Authors: Eleanor L Olvey, PharmD (below), Grant H. Skrepnek, PhD
“Evaluation of a Wireless Handheld Medication Management Program in the Prevention of Drug-Drug Interactions” Authors: Kim Saverno, BSPharm, Daniel C. Malone, PhD
“Metformin Treatment for Improving Outcomes Related to Infertility in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) - A Bayesian Analysis.” Authors: Prasadini N Perera, Daniel C Malone
Which Public Policy is More Cost-Effective in Reducing Cardiac Deaths:
Increased Taxes or Smoking Bans?” Authors: J. Michael Menke, D.C., M.A. and Daniel C. Malone Ph.D., R.Ph.
Graduate student Ana-Lucia Hincapie presents at AMIA
The center’s Ana-Lucia Hincapie presented a poster titled “Outcomes of the Arizona Medicaid Medical Information Exchange Proof of Concept.” at the American Medical Informatics Association Spring Congress held in May 2009.
Authors were Hincapie, Anita Murcko MD, FACP, and Terri Warholak PhD., RPh.
The team, led by Warholak, received funding through Arizona Medicaid to assist in developing the Arizona Medical Information Exchange (AMIE). The team has been an integral part of AMIE planning and evaluation and conducted the AMIE pilot evaluation. Through AMIE, the inaugural cohort of providers in emergency departments, outpatient clinics and private offices were equipped with Web-based access to medication history, recent laboratory test results,and hospital discharge summaries across the systems. Because AMIE adoption and use depend on provider perceptions, the team evaluated user perceptions of AMIE’s impact on costs, quality, and efficiency of health care.
New research scientists
The center is pleased to introduce four assistant research scientists who joined us during 2008 and 2009.
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Karen Smith, PhD, RPh, joined the center after receiving her PhD from UA College of Pharmacy in pharmaceutical economics, policy and outcomes. Karen received her BS in pharmacy from the University of Montana, and her MS from the University of Washington College of Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program. |
She is the current liaison between the College of Pharmacy and the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) and leads the Steering Committee as well as joint research efforts.
Karen has examined drug utilization in the elderly; healthcare and pharmaceutical costs of the Arizona Medicaid population; and progression of kidney disease as a function of blood pressure and medication use. Karen will provide lectures in the undergraduate pharmacy program and teach in the center’s annual Training Program for Health Outcomes and Pharmacoeconomic Research held in September.
In addition, she maintains her practice as a clinical pharmacist at Northwest Medical Center. Karen’s interests include pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, and the use of outcomes research to inform policy decisions that improve healthcare.
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Jason Hurwitz, MS, PhD, is a member of the center and affiliated with the Arizona Center for Education and Research in Therapeutics (AzCERT). Jason is also a recipient of the 2009 Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Health Outcomes award from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America (PhRMA) Foundation |
He has a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, with clinical and scholarly expertise in assessment, consultation, prevention and intervention concerning pediatric populations.
From 2001 to 2008, Jason assisted in research within the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), on three large-scale projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education. His current research evaluates prevalence, outcomes, and prevention of overdoses from over-the-counter medications, using large national databases and consumer testing. Jason is a course coordinator for the pharmacy class PhPr 845: Medication Use and the US Health Care System.
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Terry Urbine, PhD, is located in our downtown Phoenix office. Terry has a PhD in economics from the University of Notre Dame, with a concentration in econometrics. He received a BA in physics from Butler University. He has extensive knowledge and experience conducting quantitative analyses, forecasting, and data manipulation. |
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Before coming to the College of Pharmacy, Terry worked 16 years in private industry as a forecaster and financial analyst. He was also an assistant professor at Eastern New Mexico University. Terry’s current research interests are in the economics of disease management, comparative effectiveness of interventions, costs and benefits of medication adherence, personalized medicine biomarker economics, health information technology, and telemedicine. He is collaborating with other departments at The University of Arizona and at Arizona State University.
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Christopher Lee, PhD, RN received a BS degree in nursing (1996) from the University of New Hampshire, an MS in nursing (adult acute care nurse practitioner program; 2005) and a PhD in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania (2009). Christopher's dissertation research involving the influence of heart failure self-care behavior on health outcomes and cardiac performance was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Nursing Research. |
While at the University of Pennsylvania, Christopher received awards for excellence in teaching, clinical simulation and outstanding academic achievement and leadership, as well as the distinguished doctoral dissertation award. He has presented his research at the scientific meetings of the Heart Failure Society of America, American Heart Association, and European Society of Cardiology.
Christopher joined the Center for Health Outcomes and PharmacoEconomic Research as an assistant research scientist in 2009. His postdoctoral research is sponsored by Matrix45, a strategic evidence-based scientific consulting firm based in Earlysville, VA. His research interests involve the multi-level determinants of cardiovascular treatment effectiveness and clinical outcomes, the influence of adherence on therapeutic effectiveness, and modifiable predictors of treatment cost.
ISPOR participates in Memory Walk
The UA student chapter of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) participated in Memory Walk 2008 on Oct. 25 to benefit the Alzheimer's Association.
The team consisted of MS and PhD students in the pharmaceutical economics, policy and outcomes track.
Due to generous donations from friends, family and COP faculty, the small team managed to raise more than $750.
ISPOR members, from left (top): Adrienne Gilligan, Chizanya Mpinja; (middle): Prasadini Perera, Ana Lucia Hincapie, Elly Olvey, Selena Daniels; (front): Derek Tang.