Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety (online)

Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety: a current issue. With the prospect that even more innovative drug therapies will be introduced in the coming years, society is demanding new approaches to comparative risk/benefit evaluation, as well as new concepts. Such evaluations are usually carried out only once the relevant therapies have been used widely in daily practice.

The safety and risk management assessment of different drug therapies is then performed within the framework of observational epidemiological studies (e.g. to establish proof of ‘safety’ and proof of ‘effectiveness’). This is the logical next step after randomized clinical trials, which are designed to provide evidence of a drug’s ‘efficacy’.

During this Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety course, you will learn about typical problems, (such as confounding by indication, or rare side effects) and various pharmacoepidemiologic approaches to dealing with these problems.

The course will cover key issues in pharmacoepidemiologic and drug safety research. Special topics you will discuss include adjustment for confounding, risk detection and management, molecular pharmacoepidemiology and public health. To succesfully participate in this course you will need a medical education, or a degree in biomedical or life sciences.

Learning objectives By the end of this pharmacoepidemiologic and drug safety course, you will be able to:

• Broaden your understanding of pharmacological study design issues and methods
• Explain confounding and other biases, including the indication-related methods of adjusting for confounding
• Distinguish between different methods of drug safety research
• Describe the principles of drug safety and risk management
• Have an overview of the role of pharmacoepidemiological databases
• Understand the essence of molecular pharmacoepidemiology
• Have insight into drug utilization research

Pick a date for this course

Our courses are aimed at clinical researchers, nurses, general practitioners, and other health professionals who want to improve their skills in epidemiology, statistics and (clinical) research.

3 weeks, 14 hours per week

Even though you can manage your own time our courses are not intended as individual education. We offer personalized online learning with lots of interaction with peer students, the E-moderator and lecturers. Flexibility from students, a positive attitude towards teachers and peers and the willingness to learn together and help each other is invaluable to our courses. To experience maximum interaction, we advise you to log on several times per week.

Note that the starting dates of courses, interim deadlines, and dates of exams are fixed, but you can choose when and where you want to watch web lectures and work on assignments. The e-moderator of the course will inform you about the beginning of the course and about deadlines during the course.

The average required study workload for the courses of MSc Epidemiology Postgraduate Online is 14 hours per week. You will need this time to study, to keep up with the assignments and course material.

Please note that this course is part of an existing program within the Graduate School of Life Sciences.