Rotation 4: Drug Information

Posted by Unknown at Friday, October 05, 2018

During the last 5 weeks, I had the opportunity to work with a well known drug information company and had a great experience!

Before the rotation started, I talked to multiple people who had this rotation in the past and came in with some specific expectations. While my expectations pretty much held up (time requirement, workload, preceptor style), I learned it is important to continue keeping an open mind going into any rotation no matter what you were told by others.

First, I'll let you know that this is one of the only rotations where you get to work from home!! It was amazing and I really enjoyed setting my own schedule and working at my pace! That being said, you have to manage your time well and hold yourself accountable to getting all the work done. I met with my preceptor (and fellow classmate on rotation with me) three times a week. These meetings were between 20 minutes and 1 hour and were helpful in keeping me on track with the rotation work. My preceptor was a great resource and was very receptive to questions and suggestions. She also gave great feedback and really helped refine my skills.

My preceptor worked in the drug interaction section of the company, so we worked on updating and creating drug interaction monographs. After this rotation, I feel a lot more comfortable doing PubMed searches because of all the searching I did for this rotation! I know I will take the skills I learned in this rotation and bring them with me wherever I go! I also learned how to write concise, one sentence summaries of clinical studies for the monographs. This is a very specific kind of writing and I think it will be helpful in the future when I am writing papers and in residency. I also got to explore topics I didn't know much about during three longitudinal projects (drugs that prolong QTc, possible UGT1A1 inducers/inhibitors and interactions with smoking).

I feel really proud of the work I did this rotation. There are people all over the world who will use the monographs I created to help patients! I can go and lookup the drug interaction (e.g., omeprazole and ginkgo biloba) and see one of the monographs I created! I feel so excited thinking that I contributed something so practical and widely used to the field of pharmacy and medicine!

Two things to remember:
-Keep an open mind going into any experience and put your best foot forward!
-Make sure you take time and enjoy this beautiful life, no matter how busy it gets!

Exploring Maine: Acadia National Park (top) and Baxter State Park (bottom)

Rotation 7: Lexicomp and Work From Home

Posted by Unknown at Tuesday, January 24, 2017

I was very thankful that I received not only Lexicomp, but also with Steven Stout, someone with a technical background and someone immersed in the database management aspect of keeping this enormous drug information resource online.

Unlike most rotations, Lexicomp is a work-from-home. Typically, I met with my preceptor 2-3 times per week in various coffee shops in the Ann Arbor area for discussion of the work done so far, where to go from here, and do mini "topic-discussions" on topics related to the collection and organization of drug information resources. This includes statistics, study design, database design, information sources, how to vet information sources, searching (search terms, structure, narrowing results), and many, many more.

Work centers around the searching, collection, organization, and drafting of drug interaction monographs for inclusion in the Lexicomp Interactions database, as well as taking part in a number of longitudinal projects that his team is involved with. This includes migration to a new content management system and the thousands of tasks involved in that process, developing a tool that creates graphical summaries of queries to the OpenFDA API, among others.

This has been a very flexible rotation--work does not need to be done in an eight hour block so long as it gets done and during interview season (onsites for fellowships) this has been an incredible benefit as I can do work on the plane or in an airport or in a hotel in Seattle. That said, you will be tested on your time management skills as there is no external forces making you do anything! Self-motivation is a big plus!

One of the biggest benefits (as pointed out by other commentators) is the incredibly refinement of your literature search abilities. I had been doing this in a managed care setting for two years and still made leaps and bounds in my ability to careful craft queries (MeSH terms are the best) and iteratively refine my searches to maximize my relevant results. There have been many "mind-blown" moments when using PubMed, EMBASE, and other databases with these techniques, particularly when comparing how I used to construct a term versus my current method.

What has been incredibly cool is seeing the nuts and bolts of Lexicomp Interactions—how everything fits together and the methods that they use to keep their enormous quantity of data organized and maintained. My preceptor is truly a master of the craft and he has been an incredible mentor in developing some of my own skills in this area as well.

A typical day is what you make it, and there is tremendous flexibility in pursuing projects relevant to your interests! Highly recommended!

Michael Harrison (mhar)