Medication Safety in Focus: INTERPOLAR Team Prepares for Second Study Phase | INTERPOLAR Day in Leipzig

This spring, the INTERPOLAR studies on medication safety will enter their second phase. To discuss the next steps in the project, the team met on March 11th and 12th for the INTERPOLAR Day at the BioCity in Leipzig. 

The INTERPOLAR project of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) investigates whether an IT-supported medication analysis can help ward pharmacists to efficiently identify and assess drug-related problems.

Review: IT support for ward pharmacists introduced

At the beginning of the INTERPOLAR Day, Dr. Daniel Neumann, Scientific Project Manager of INTERPOLAR, summarized the past two years and the current status of the project. The project has reached some important milestones since its start in January 2023: In the first study phase, a standardized, cross-site documentation of drug-related problems was introduced in the participating clinics and the “Drug Therapy Safety Cockpit” (AMTS Cockpit) was developed. This serves as a central user interface for ward pharmacists. If an unusual combination of medications is entered for a patient, a message appears in the AMTS Cockpit. The cockpit is connected to the FHIR servers of the Data Integration Centers via an IT process developed in INTERPOLAR, the “CDS toolchain”, so that the data collected in the studies can be used for research.

The second phase of the two-part study is currently being prepared, in which the drug-related problems suggested by the cockpit will be assessed for their relevance.

Participating hospitals ready for the practical part of the study

The INTERPOLAR project has now entered clinical practice: The first patients have already been enrolled at three sites. In addition, the internal data transfer from the hospital information systems required for INTERPOLAR has been tested by the Data Integration Centers at all participating hospital sites.

As another agenda item of the INTERPOLAR Day, the “Cockpit” working group presented the final documentation and interaction concept as well as the user interface of the Medication Safety (AMTS) Cockpit which will enable ward pharmacists to manage their medication analyses more clearly.

Relevance assessment of the proposed medication problems

On the second day, the INTERPOLAR team focused on assessing the relevance of medication problems suggested by the algorithm. Relevance assessment is a critical step in improving the quality of medication analysis and minimizing false alarms. This is initially performed by the ward pharmacists on site. Subsequently, the reported risks that were not assessed as relevant in the first step will be re-evaluated in a multi-site analysis by comprehensive, inter-professional panels. In this way, deviations can be investigated in more detail and the algorithm can be optimized in the long term.

The next INTERPOLAR Day will be held as a web meeting on May 23, 2025.