Improving drug safety for pregnant women by delivering current and authoritative information via mobile devices

Rightanswer.Com, Inc., Midland MI

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the United States, nearly 2/3 of all pregnant women are prescribed one or more drugs during pregnancy. The impact on public health is significant. Approximately 40,000 birth defects are due to drugs taken during pregnancy. Additionally, many patients fear that exposure to any medication during pregnancy will cause harm to the embryo/fetus and this fear has led to unrealistic perceptions of teratogenic risk, the termination of wanted pregnancies, and systemic long-lasing implications such as safe medications, needed for healthy pregnancy, being removed from the market place. Unfortunately, while databases and teams of experts, such as TERIS, exist there is a lack of dissemination that could bring the information to women when they need it. Increasing knowledge of teratogen risk to improve medication safety and reduce anxiety and fear requires that three general requirements be met: 1) information needs to accurate, up-to-date, complete, and presented in a consistent manner in ways that it can be accessed by multiple criteria, 2) information about adverse drug effects and safety must be presented in ways that make them understandable to the lay public while providing the appropriate levels of detail so that professionals can provide the best advice, 3) novel business models need to be developed to increase information access and support the resources to integrate new knowledge as it becomes available. Together Right Answer (://www.rightanswer.com) and the TERIS team at the University of Washington will address the problem by developing a class of product that integrates the relevant information and presents it in novel user-centered ways on mobile devices. We will improve the organization of data resources to support diverse querying of medical options by integrating the appropriate data sources to support queries based on drug names, therapeutic class, and condition. By comparing responses to teratogenic risk using TERIS data formatted in different ways to standard pharmacy information, we will learn how increased information and enhanced formatting can improve knowledge and communication of drug safety and risk for pregnant women. Finally, we will identify business models and related industry channels to increase data access and to support continuing commercial development to ensure long-term resource stability and growth and improve prenatal health care for the general public.