• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.2165-2171
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• 2015

Due to the development of improved living conditions and medical technology in recent periodic taking drugs is increasing through the outpatient rather than inpatient hospital care. Particularly in the case of patients suffering from geriatric diseases. This geriatric patients should have more attention to the taking medication management because it must keep the medication period. In this paper, we propose and describe an taking medicine information service system for the period and stable taking medicine in patients using the NFC-based u-Drug Cap and technology development and system test results. The developed system is through proper taking medicine information and alarm of geriatric patients or elderly patients. The patient's health can be maintained by preventing not taking and over taking of medicine.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.154-157
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• 2018

Levosulpiride is one of the most frequently prescribed medicines in Korea. An adverse drug reaction (ADR) after taking levosulpiride was reported at a community pharmacy in Korea. A 31-year-old woman reported the symptoms of lactation and amenorrhea after taking levosulpiride; an evaluation of whether these symptoms were caused by the medication was therefore necessary. Several tools can be used to determine if the ADR resulted from the administered drug or other factors, including the World Health Organization-Uppsala Monitoring Centre (WHO-UMC) criteria, the Naranjo scale, and the Korean causality assessment algorithm (Ver. 2). The causality was evaluated as "possible" by the WHO-UMC and Naranjo scales, but as "probable" by the Korean causality assessment algorithm (Ver. 2). In conclusion, the information provided did not indicate definite causality and there were slight differences in the results obtained from each assessment method.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.6-23
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• 2015

This study develops an effective method for sentiment analysis of user-generated content on drug review websites, which has not been investigated extensively compared to other general domains, such as product reviews. A clause-level sentiment analysis algorithm is developed since each sentence can contain multiple clauses discussing multiple aspects of a drug. The method adopts a pure linguistic approach of computing the sentiment orientation (positive, negative, or neutral) of a clause from the prior sentiment scores assigned to words, taking into consideration the grammatical relations and semantic annotation (such as disorder terms) of words in the clause. Experiment results with 2,700 clauses show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, and it performed significantly better than the baseline approaches using a machine learning approach. Various challenging issues were identified and discussed through error analysis. The application of the proposed sentiment analysis approach will be useful not only for patients, but also for drug makers and clinicians to obtain valuable summaries of public opinion. Since sentiment analysis is domain specific, domain knowledge in drug reviews is incorporated into the sentiment analysis algorithm to provide more accurate analysis. In particular, MetaMap is used to map various health and medical terms (such as disease and drug names) to semantic types in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Semantic Network.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.243-249
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• 2020

Background: Despite the increased use of direct-acting oral anticoagulants, warfarin is still recommended as first-line therapy in patients with mechanical valves or moderate to severe mitral stenosis. Anticoagulation management services (AMSs) are warranted for patients receiving warfarin therapy due to the complexity of warfarin dosing and large interpatient variability. To overcome limited health care resources, we developed a messenger app-based chatbot that provides information to patients taking warfarin. Methods: We developed "WafarinTalk" as an add-on to the open-source messenger app KakaoTalk. We developed the prototype chatbot after building a database containing seven categories: 1) dosage and indications, 2) drug-drug interactions, 3) drug-food interactions, 4) drug-diet supplement interactions, 5) monitoring, 6) adverse events, and 7) precautions. We then surveyed 30 pharmacists and 10 patients on chatbot reliability and on participant satisfaction. Results: We found that 80% of the pharmacists agreed on the consistency of chatbot responses and 44% agreed on the appropriateness of chatbot. Furthermore, 47% of pharmacists said that they were willing to recommend the chatbot to patients. Of the seven categories, information on drug-food interaction was the most useful; 90% of patients said they were satisfied with the chatbot and 100% of patients said they were willing to use it when they were unable to see a pharmacist. We updated the prototype chatbot with feedback from the survey. Conclusion: This study showed that warfarin-related information could be provided to patients through a messenger application-based chatbot.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.49-56
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• 2013

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the patterns of Over-the-Counter (OTC) drugs and their interactions with prescription drugs in adults visiting a community pharmacy. Method: The subjects were 151 adults aged over 20 years visiting a community pharmacy in Asan-si from December 16th 2011 to February 1st 2012. We used a survey questionnaire. The survey inquired about the prevalence and the details of any OTC drug use and the characteristics of the study subjects. The drug interaction classification system from Lexicomp's Lexi-interact data fields was used to identify OTC drugs likely to have clinically significant interactions with prescription drugs. Results: The patterns of OTC drug use were related to thirties (from 30 to 40 years old), female gender, higher education, non-smoking, sometimes use of alcohol, and self-perceived normal health status. The most commonly used OTC drug category was antipyretic-analgesics (n=104, 53.3%), and the most commonly used ingredient was acetaminophen (n=67, 64.4%). The biggest motivation for taking OTC drugs was suggestion by pharmacists, reported by 55.6%. After reviewing each patient's prescription drugs and OTC drugs, 14 patients (36.8%) of 38 patients using prescription drugs were taking drug combinations with potential for clinically significant interactions. The concomitant use of OTC drugs with prescription drugs may lead to increased potentially harmful interactions. Conclusion: It is suggested that health-care professionals should be more aware of the potential and possible interactions and take into better account their patients' OTC drug use.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.183-192
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• 2014

Purpose: This study was aimed to identify the status of utilization of healthcare services and self-care behaviors, knowledge level and influencing choice factors of non-prescription drugs (OTCs) on consumers since sales of OTCs at the outside of pharmacy in Korea, and to confirm the changes in perception of consumers for OTCs policy through check of perception level for current OTCs policy. Methods: Data was collected from April 2014 to May 2014 from questionnaires by 418 adults who are in university located in Seoul or live in Seoul Metropolitan area but not health science major and healthcare providers. Results: The female gender was 56.6% and University students were 73.9%. The ratio by age was as follows: below 25 (60.9%), 26-30 (18.2%), 30-40s (14.9%) and 50-60s (6.0%). The knowledge level of OTCs for use of medicine, dose and side effects was generally low and especially they knew little how to deal with side effects after taking OTCs on sale at the outside of pharmacy, even though over one year has passed since the policy. The proportion of those who thought the current OTCs policy has problems regarding safety issues since the policy was very high and it was also high that the study group thought there are problems with the current way to sale OTCs and educate employees. Conclusion: After selling OTCs at the outside of pharmacy, the consumers still lacked knowledge of OTCs and did not get correct information properly. Especially, they had little information about the way to deal with side effects after taking OTCs. Public policy should be based on the health of the people and the public health is a national health priority. When all these things are taken into consideration, the government has to strengthen the OTCs policy and provide a safer environment with the accurate drug information for people than developing OTCs policy in the future.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Rural Health Nursing
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.3-11
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• 2017

Purpose: This study was done to investigate the status of drug misuse and abuse in community-dwelling elders. Methods: The participants in this study were elders who were 65 years or over, and lived in ChungNam province. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: All of the participants reported taking both prescription and non-prescription drugs, and 78.4% used two or more kinds of drugs. Of the elders, 74.5% reported that they did not receive any education about drug misuse and abuse. The mean score for behaviors related to drug misuse was 8.76. Conclusions: Results indicate that many elders take medicine frequently, but they do not have any knowledge about drugs and possible side effects. This lack of knowledge might mean that they continue to use and misuse prescription and non-prescription drugs. It is important that elders be provided with precise information about medicines.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.254-263
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• 2016

Objective: Written information could be helpful for senior population to adhere to complex medication therapies, but must be well prepared and empirically assessed to achieve such end. We purposed to develop a drug information leaflet for senior citizens by applying 'performance-based user-testing.' Methods: We employed a user-testing, a mixed method to figure difficulties out with patients' leaflets from the user perspective. The cycle made of test and revision can be repeated as necessary. We recruited senior citizens with age of 65 or above who were taking antihypertensive medications at the point of participating and excluded the elderly who suffered illiteracy. We firstly rectified a drug information leaflet of antihypertensive medications for the general public distributed by the Korean authority based on focus group interviews (9 participants). The revised leaflets were tested four times with 8~12 participants in each round (40 seniors in total). We targeted to develop a leaflet which more than 80% of participants understood 10 key information. Main outcomes measures were to be able to find information and be able to understand information. This study was approved by the Yeungnam University Research Ethics Committee. Results: Focus group interviews identified difficulties with small font of words, professional language, long information, and a poor structure. The leaflet was revised and in the first round questionnaire found problems with 4/10 information points; interviews disclosed all but one (normal blood pressure range) were ill-understood. The second round questionnaire and interview found fewer problems but the comprehensiveness of participants was still poor in several points. For the third and fourth rounds we revised the leaflets in the individual-targeted manner. Finally, the fourth round showed all key information found and understood by at least 80% of participants except one question about drug name. Conclusion: The drug leaflets need to be developed in a personalized mode for the seniors. There was a limit for Korean seniors to understand nonproprietary name of their drugs because they used to producers' trade names which the Korean health system predominantly works with.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.171-177
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• 2017

Objective: The study purpose was to develop a drug information leaflet for the elderly and to evaluate it with performance-based user-testing. Methods: We performed a stratified randomized controlled trial. We recruited 62 elderly patients with age of 65 or above who were taking antidiabetic medications at the point of participating and excluded those who suffered illiteracy. We randomly allocated them into the intervention group with a leaflet for the elderly and the control group with a leaflet for the general public. Main outcome measures were to 'be able to find information' and to 'be able to understand information.' We measured outcome variables by employing performance-based user-testing and analyzed data to find any differences between two groups with t-tests, chi-squared tests or Fisher's exact tests accordingly. Results: More participants in the intervention group understood how to store their medications than those in the control group (intervention group 93% vs. control group 70%; p=0.02). There were no significant differences in other information items between two groups. Mostly 'being able to understand information' was lower than 'being able to find information.' The gaps between two outcome variables were about 10% in the intervention group and about 18% in the control group. The lowest understanding was observed in information relating to drug names and their potential adverse events. Conclusion: Without providing personalized drug information, it might be hard for the elderly to improve their drug knowledge even with leaflets that were developed specifically for the elderly.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.156-161
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• 2007

Rapid advances in pharmacogenomic research have provided important information to improve drug selection, to maximize drug efficacy, and to minimize drug adverse reaction. The SNPs that are the most abundant type of genetic variants have been proven as valid biomarkers to give information on the prediction of pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic properties of drugs based on genotype. In order to elucidate a correlation between SNPs of calcium channel encoding gene and adverse reactions of calcium channel blockers, we investigated SNPs in CACNA1C gene known as a binding site of calcium channel blocker. 96 patients with hypertension who had taken or are taking an antihypertensive drug, 1,4-dihydropyridine (DHP) were included for analysis. These patients were composed of 47 patients with adverse drug reactions (ADR) such as edema from calcium channel blockers and 49 patients without ADR as a control group. The exons encoding the drug binding sites were amplified by PCR using specific primers, and SNPs were analyzed by direct sequencing. We found that there was no SNP in the exons encoding DHP binding site, but four novel SNPs in the exon-intron junction region. However, four novel SNPs were not associated with the ADR of calcium channel blockers. In conclusion, this study showed that ADR from calcium channel blockers may not be caused by SNPs of the binding sites of calcium channel blockers in CACNA1C gene.