PhD Studentships in Pharmacoepidemiology

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is pleased to invite applications for two PhD studentships in pharmacoepidemiology, funded for three years by the General Practice Research Database (GPRD), starting in October 2011.

The studentship is based in the Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health. The Faculty is multi-disciplinary and encompasses epidemiologists, medical statisticians, medical demographers, nutritionists, social scientists and public health practitioners.

The project concerns epidemiological research into how best to define outcomes that may be adverse drug effects using data from large observational databases and linked datasets. This will involve large scale data analyses and original methodological research pertinent to drug safety issues.

The student stipend will be £20,897 in the first year, increasing annually thereafter.

Project Outline

Defining outcomes for pharmacoepidemiology using large general practice databases
Supervisors: Dr Krishnan Bhaskaran, Dr Ian Douglas and Professor Liam Smeeth

Eligibility

Applicants should preferably have an MSc (or equivalent) in epidemiology or statistics. An aptitude for applied methodological research in epidemiology or statistics is important.

How to Apply

Applicants are encouraged to contact Krishnan Bhaskaran ([log in to unmask]) or Ian Douglas ([log in to unmask]) for an informal discussion.

Please see http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/prospectus/funding/gprd2011.html for details of how to apply and to download application forms.

Closing date for application: 6th June 2011
Interviews will be in the week commencing 13th June 2011

Project Description

PhD Studentship in Pharmacoepidemiology
Unintended effects of prescribed medicines

Unexpected effects of drugs that are important to individual patients are frequently too rare to be reliably detected in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) which are powered for the main therapeutic effect the drug was designed for. For drugs of proven efficacy, new population based RCTs are not frequently undertaken. Furthermore, high risk groups are often excluded from RCTs, and even when they are included, their numbers are unlikely to be adequate to provide reliable evidence. When safety concerns are raised about a drug, there is a clear need to undertake high quality adequately powered epidemiological studies to establish whether the concerns are justified. Databases of electronic health records (EHR), such as the UK General Practice Research Database (GPRD) offer an ideal setting in which to conduct these studies.

The overall aim of the current PhD projects is to develop better approaches to the detection and evaluation of adverse drug effects using electronic health records The type and complexity of the information collected in electronic health record databases is increasing, including anonymised free-text, ethnicity and data from linked disease registries and from hospitals. The availability of such rich data offers both opportunities and challenges for researchers to undertake better research, particularly related to improved case definition and ascertainment. The output of these projects may link in with future pharmacogenetic studies to validate case definitions through the collection of biological samples – notably genetic samples.

Key objectives

1. To improve the phenotyping of outcomes (case definitions) for key adverse events in EHR databases
2. To improve the classification of information that is recorded in different parts of the EHR or also in linked datasets (such as ethnicity).

The project is being funded by the European Union Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and will be a part of the PROTECT element of IMI. PROTECT (Pharmacoepidemiological Research on Outcomes of Therapeutics by a European Consortium) is a collaborative European project that comprises a programme to address limitations of current methods in the field of pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance. Students will spend some of their time at the offices of the GPRD in central London.

This project will be based in the Faculty of Epidemiology & Population Health.

 
 
 

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