ISPE Academic Council Meeting:
The Academic Council Met in Taiwan!

The ISPE Academic Council met during the last ISPE conference in Taiwan October 26th, 2014. The meeting was well attended by academics working in institutions and universities across North America, Europe and Asia.

The council discussed a number of topics, and Dr Ian Douglas gave a brief presentation on the methods used at London School Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (London, UK) to convert face-to-face teaching on Pharmacoepidemiology into an online course. Ideas of webinars to be organized in the coming year/s were discussed, and the possibility to organize a pre-conference module for ISPE Boston 2015 (to be confirmed) was proposed.

Finally, and during this same meeting, Dr Daniel Prieto-Alhambra, University Oxford, (UK) / SIDIAP (Barcelona, Spain) was elected as co-chair for the academic council.

To request a copy of the meeting Minutes, please send an email to [email protected].  

2014 ICPE Conference Highlights:

The ISPE 2014 conference held in Taipei last October was an absolute success. We have asked one of our academic colleagues to write a brief report on their experience attending the meeting:

Patrick Souverein (Utrecht, Netherlands)

For the first time the annual meeting was held in Asia and certainly we were made to feel welcome in Taiwan. The pride of hosting the conference was apparent and reflected in the gala dinner with stage performances in the Grand Hotel. I attended part of the advanced pharmacoepidemiology course and heard interesting lectures by (among others) Ken Rothman who talked about the sense and nonsense of representativeness.

The first day proper started with a session on the future of pharmacoepidemiology, where particularly the talk by Bert Leufkens was inspiring. As I had to present in two sessions during the day I attended sessions on biologics and antidepressant use and safety.

Personal highlights of the conference were the symposium on the IMI-PROTECT project, in which exposure-outcome relationships were studied in electronic health care database from multiple European countries using a common protocol and data specification plan.  The meeting was the first opportunity to show the overall results of several years of work. Also, the plenary session on developments in methods in pharmacoepidemiology was interesting.  

This year again, the number of session on methods was substantial and all well attended. My observation was that despite all the attention for developing new techniques over the last years, the practical implementation of these novel methods in more routine pharmacoepidemiological studies seems to be lacking at this moment. The workshop on adherence to drug treatment nicely showed how complex calculation of adherence within databases is, Petra Denig gave some nice examples. Also, the workshop moderated by Patrick Ryan and Marieke de Bruin on common data models fitted perfectly in the current environment where collecting and combining data (sources) and/or results from studies gets more important.

All in all, an entertaining ICPE on several accounts. Let's all continue our good work in Boston! 

Webinars

 

The ISPE Education Committee is accepting proposals for educational webinars. The Academic Council has the opportunity to submit suggestions for the webinars. If you have an idea for an Academic Council webinar, please contact Irene Petersen ( [email protected]). 

The Education Committee will review each application, and, if approved, staff will work with you to schedule the webinar.

Webinar Format: 

* Webinars will be 60 minutes total; 45 minutes of presentation and 15 minutes for questions and answers. 

Pharmacoepidemiology Programs on ISPE Website

Training Programs in Pediatric Pharmacoepidemiology

In 2013 and 2014, the ISPE Pediatric SIG conducted a needs assessment to identify critical needs in pediatric pharmacoepidemiology and directions for future activities. As part of their  needs assessment they asked our members to identify training programs that provide content in pediatric pharmacoepidemiology and/or in related areas such as pharmacology.   The survey yielded information about three programs specifically dedicated to pediatric pharmacoepidemiology, two at the fellowship level at medical schools and one in the graduate program at a college of pharmacy. Six additional programs offer related content and included graduate programs within Schools of Public Health or Colleges of Pharmacy, as well as medical fellowship training programs associated with departments of pharmacology. An additional program within a school of public health offers training in the pharmacoepidemiology of medications used in pregnancy.

The list of programs and contact information will be published by the ISPE Academic Council webpage.

1. The next Academic Council meeting will be held on 26 May, 2015 at 10am EDT US and 3pm BST UK via Webex. A registration link will be sent prior to the meeting. Please contact Irene Petersen if you have any items you would like to bring up at the next meeting. 

Summer Schools