Tsan-Hua Tung, PhD Student
Vancomycin Dosing Management
Motivation:
Appropriate drug dosing has direct impact on desired patient and healthcare outcomes. Vancomycin is an antibiotic drug that is widely used to treat infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Due to its narrow therapeutic efficacy band, overdosing would cause harmful effects while underdosing might not provide the desired level of therapy. Current standard dosing recommendation for vancomycin is primarily based on average population estimates and not on individual patient characteristics. In addition, available data is mainly derived from adults and not pediatric patients.
To improve the potential for effective therapy and reduce the risk of personal overdosing during dosing trials and error adjustments, a dosing management model that considers individual characteristic is desired. Such a model would be particularly beneficial for vulnerable populations such as infants and children.
Description and Approaches:
The primary objective for this project is to create a real-time drug response tracking system for clinicians to individualize drug dose regimen for precision medication. To achieve the objective, the pilot study on vancomycin will emphasize on these two deliverables:
- Understand existing workflow and information exchange in complex and time sensitive clinical settings. These may include the expected task for each stakeholder in the dosing and monitoring processes, the actual task performed and the information recorded. We intent to understand existing workflows to better develop a dosing management model that could be integrated with existing healthcare systems.
- Develop a data-driven model of vancomycin dosing and monitoring that takes into account individual patient characteristics as well as environment and system factors.
Collaborators:
- School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University
- School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University
- Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering (RCHE)
- Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin