Division of Pharmacoepidemiology & Clinical Pharmacology (PECP), Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), Utrecht University

The Utrecht University Pharmacoepidemiology Center is one of the leading academic groups in the world in the interface between pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacovigilance and drug innovation. The group has an extensive research record on new methods of data collection, study design and data analysis delivering >50 papers per year. Key features of the profile of the group over the years have been new methods on drug channelling, exposure ascertainment, rare events, signal detection and evaluation, adjustment for confounding, record linkage, pharmacogenetics and implication for public health and weighing of benefit/risk.

The Centre aims to apply, develop, improve, and evaluate innovative observational pharmacoepidemiologic methods to obtain reliable information on benefits and harms of medicines after marketing in real life. Methodological innovations are inspired by relevant research questions in clinical practice, pharmaceutical policy, and regulation. Important themes are methods to measure impact of interventions, to prevent and/or control for confounding, analysis of effect modification (precision medicine), multi-database analysis, and innovative approaches for increasing validity and richness of data. The Centre for Pharmacoepidemiology has established the EU PE&PV (Pharmacoepidemiology & Pharmacovigilance) Research Network, and has developed novel methodologies for the conduct of multi-country, multi-database studies on variability of medicines’ use and patient outcomes.