Population Health and Use of Medicines Unit
PHUM Annual Meeting & Review Forum - Are we really using data in a better way? Sydney 12th July 2007
With Forum participants we were able to review the progress made by PHUM on its work towards “better use of better data”, reflect upon all that had been achieved, including what had been effective and the lessons learnt over the past three years. Participant discussion aided in the development of anticipated future needs, ways to improve data sets and future analysis, a forward focus for PHUM and recommendations for stakeholders on possible future activities to facilitate a forward focus. The Proceedings of the PHUM Annual Meeting & Review Forum are available under PHUM Presentations and Publications.
About PHUM - A joint undertaking between UNSW and St Vincent's Hospital
The Population Health and Use of Medicines (PHUM) Unit was established in June 2004 for the purpose of investigating the health outcomes related to the Australian community’s use of prescription medicines.
Situated in the Therapeutics Centre at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, PHUM is a joint undertaking between the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales and St Vincent’s Hospital.
Our Mission
Our mission is to:
- make the best use of existing data sources to evaluate health outcomes from the use of medicines
- advocate for the linkage of prescribing and health outcomes data
- measure the population outcomes that arise from changes in community use of prescribed medicines
- conduct policy relevant research on the use of medicines
- disseminate the results of our work to Australian health policy makers in a timely manner
Our Objective
Our principal objective is to advance knowledge relating to the population outcomes associated with changes in drug use in specific health priority areas such as mental health, cardiovascular disease, arthritis and diabetes.
Our Strategic Approach
By using population statistical methods to track health outcomes from clinical practice experience we can determine the contributions medicines have made to the health of the Australian population.
Although a range of complicated environmental factors and other influences can affect the community’s medicine use and health outcomes, taking the underlying issues into account means meaningful causal inferences can still be made.
Various databases are available to evaluate trends in population health and patterns of community drug use in Australia, but concern about maintenance of personal privacy means linking related databases describing health outcomes and medical interventions is protracted and difficult.
In the absence of linked prescribing and health outcome data, specific statistical methods allow us to make meaningful inferences between medicines and health. Professors Hall and Mant have demonstrated the feasibility of this approach in
recent research.
We expect better access to established Australian databases and simplified data analysis will be possible when benefits from analysing linked data becomes evident to Governments, legislative authorities and the wider population.
Endorsement
PHUM has been strongly endorsed by the chairs of the
National Medicines Policy who acknowledged the importance of appropriately and ethically undertaken database linking.
"Better Use of Better Data"