A University of Liverpool website and smartphone application designed to help healthcare professionals to safely prescribe medications for hepatitis patients has been ‘strongly recommended’ for use by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Hepatitis is the term used to describe inflammation of the liver usually the result of a viral infection or liver damage.
Many drug combinations have the potential to interact and this can affect patient safety or the effectiveness of treatment. For this reason, some drug combinations should not be given at all, while other drugs may be used together with caution.
Forefront of healthcare
The site and smartphone application, http://www.hep-druginteractions.org/, provide a guide to interactions that may occur between different hepatitis drugs and over 600 co-medications that a patient may be prescribed, as well as recreational drugs and herbals.
Developed and maintained by the University’s Institute of Translational Medicine the site and application are at the forefront of helping healthcare professionals to safely prescribe medications for hepatitis patients.
The WHO “Guidelines for the screening, care and treatment of persons with chronic hepatitis C infection” advise healthcare professionals worldwide that it is “strongly recommended” they consult the site/app as the details of drug interactions are “frequently updated”.
Important recommendation
Professor of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology Saye Khoo, said: “We are delighted at receiving this important recommendation from such a well-known and respected international organisation.
“When new drugs appear on the market the site and application are updated to ensure the information available is right up-to-date.”
The application has been downloaded more than 31,000 times and, on average, there are 230,000 drug interaction queries through the site and app combined per month.
Professor Khoo, adds: “Only last week a newly approved drug called Velpatasvir was added thanks to the hard work of the pharmacology team to ensure interactions with recent drug approvals are added in a timely fashion. This required the creation and addition of over 600 interaction records which were completed and put live in little over a week after the drug had received its US and European authorisations.”
For more information about the site or application please visit:
http://www.hep-druginteractions.org/
