Pharmacoepidemiological Methods and Techniques

Code: CMS14599O

3 ECTS

Duration: 15 weeks/78 hours

Scientific Area: Ciências Farmacêuticas

Teaching languages: Portuguese

Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese

Regime de Frequência: B-learning

Presentation

Pharmacoepidemiology, defined as the study of the use and effects of drugs on populations, started from the need to evaluate the unexpected effects of drugs, introduced by pharmacotherapy, significantly contributing to individual and collective health and safety.

Sustainable Development Goals

4. Educação de qualidade - Assegurar a educação inclusiva, e equitativa e de qualidade, e promover oportunidades de aprendizagem ao longo da vida para todos.

Learning Goals

The concepts and methodologies of general epidemiology, clinical epidemiology and clinical pharmacology will be explained and applied to the study of the use and effects of medicines.
At the end of the discipline, students should have the skills and competences to consult and interpret pharmacoepidemiologic studies with different types of designs to determine which therapeutic option presents the best benefit/risk ratio.

• Background Epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology: definition, problems, and methodologies.
• The pharmacoepidemiology in the medicine life cycle.
• Legal and ethical aspects of pharmacoepidemiologic research.
• Types of pharmacoepidemiologic studies: conceptual, methodological, and operational design. Limitations.
• Pharmacoepidemiology in assessing the safety and efficacy/effectiveness of drugs.

Teaching Methods

Classroom lessons (9h): divided into three sessions inaugural, workshop, and evaluation; the rest (21h) being carried out remotely. The teaching methodology will be centered on dynamic learning based on the presentation of fundamental concepts, followed by theoretical-practical sessions for discussion of works involving a) discussion and critical analysis of scientific articles using different methodologies and designs of pharmacoepidemiologic studies; b) design of a study protocol to answer a research question proposed by the student, related to drug efficacy, effectiveness and/or safety. The features of Moodle, videos and other synchronous and asynchronous methodologies considered adequate to the pedagogical objectives of the curricular unit will be used.

Assessment

The final evaluation results from the continuous assessment of the work developed/presented/discussed throughout the course (40%) and a final research protocol (60%).