Drug-drug Interaction Profiles of Medication Regimens Extracted from a De-identified Electronic Medical Records System

With age, the number of prescribed medications increases and subsequently raises the risk for adverse drug-drug interactions. These adverse effects lower quality of life and increase health care costs. Quantifying the potential burden of adverse effects before prescribing medications can be a valuable contribution to health care. This study evaluated medication lists extracted from a subset of the Vanderbilt de-identified electronic medical record system. Reported drugs were cross-referenced with the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes DRUG database to identify known drug-drug interactions. On average, a medication regimen contained 6.58 medications and 2.68 drug-drug interactions. Here, we quantify the burden of potential adverse events from drug-drug interactions through drug-drug interaction profiles and include a number of alternative medications as provided by the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System.