Lack of drug effectiveness and increased side effects that can lead to patient nonadherence are some of the biggest challenges providers face related to prescribing medications. According to the CDC, serious side effects known as adverse drug events (ADEs) cost $3.5 billion annually in extra medical costs and are responsible for 700,000 emergency department visits per year.
Every drug comes with the risk of side effects and nearly every patient will experience them in some form. Physicians sometimes struggle with managing their patient’s drug regimens because the origin of side effects can be hazy. Many do not know that these adverse drug events can be due to their patient’s genetics. Such drug-gene interactions can be just as impactful as interactions between two or more medications, so much that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has included warning labels on more than 100 medications advising prescribers of their potential drug-gene interaction risk.
Unknown Factor?
Health care providers can account for factors such as age, physiologic function and concomitant disease, but patient genotype remains a major unknown in most drug prescribing. All too often, this results in an ADE. What tools can best help physicians cut down on potentially deadly side effects and reduce the associated costs?
Physicians are increasingly turning to pharmacogenetic testing to reduce ADEs, improve patient response to medications and mitigate potential provider risk associated with drug interactions in their practice. Such testing lies at the heart of the YouScript Personalized Prescribing System.
YouScript uses genetic data and the latest clinical knowledge on drug metabolism to help predict which prescription medications will work best for each patient.
Learn more below, or request a free trial today.
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