A Dutch research-group studied the association between inappropriate prescribing and hospital admissions as a nested case-control study of the HARM study. They concluded that patients with potentially inappropriate prescribing, detected with the STOPP & START 2008 criteria, are at risk of preventable medication-related hospital admissions. The STOPP & START 2008 criteria can be used to identify older people at risk of medication-related problems. The study is published in Drug Safety January 2016, Volume 39, Issue 1, pp 79-87.

Michiel Meulendijk has defended successfully his thesis “Optimazing medication reviews through decision support: prescribing a better pill to swallow.” In his thesis he describes studies towards the STRIPassistant, a digital tool. The STRIPassistant will be improved and studied in the OPERAM study a RCT performed in Europe. The thesis is available at this website.

The Frailty Guideline, proposed by the Geriatric Expect Group of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), has been published online for public consultation. Please use the link to the Frailty Guideline on the EMA website.

The second OPERAM meeting will take place at 11 and 12 January 2016 in Bunnik close to Utrecht. During this meeting the set up of the OPERAM trial and especially the use of the new version of the STRIPassistant, the implementation of the medication review and adjudication of adverse effects will be discussed. Also the health economics part of the trial and the performance of the systematic reviews and network meta-analysis are topics at this meeting.

The thesis of Michiel Meulendijk ‘Optimizing medication reviews through decision support: prescribing a better pill to swallow’ is as pdf available on this website (see research). In this thesis the development of the STRIPassistant is described. The STRIP is a structured method to reduce inappropriate prescribing and is developed by Ephor in cooperation with general practitioners.

At 3 December in Brussel a symposium will be organized concerning “Polymedication and rational use of appropriate medication in older patients”. At this symposium the development and first results of studies of the STRIP-assistant, a digital tool to improve appropriate prescribing, will be presented.

The international seminar ‘Targeting the burden of polypharmacy in the elderly’ (REPOSI 2015) will be held September 24-25 in Milan. The goal of this seminar is to discuss multimorbidity and related polypharmacy to improve the appropriateness of prescribing. The STRIPassistant, a tool of Ephor to optimize prescribing, will be demonstrated. More information is available at the website www.smc-media.com.

Europe-ExPro is an institute that identifies clinical, economic and patient related issues in certain disease areas that require an assessment by experts. Europe-ExPro brings forth expert procedures on these issues. The expert procedure aims to define the relevance between the new treatment option and the existing treatment options. This is done from different perspectives, such as clinical, economic or patient perspective. By evidence based and practice based methods the relevant differences are validated. The expert procedure results in a report for public use and a manuscript available for submission in an appropriate journal. The link to the website is here provided (see Link).

There is lack of consensus on the definition of deprescribing. A review of Reeve et al., accepted for publication in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (Aug 2015), proposes the following definition: „Deprescribing is the process of withdrawal of an inappropriate medication, supervised by a health care professional with the goal of managing polypharmacy and improving outcomes‟. This definition has not yet been externally validated and further work is required to develop an internationally accepted and appropriate definition.

The Norwegian General Practice – Nursing Home criteria (NORGEP-NH) for potentially inappropriate medication use are published online in the Scandinivian Journal of  Primary Health Care. 2015 Jun 23:1-8. The abstract is available at ‘Research’ – ‘Articles”