Due to the growing demand for personalized medicine, the WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences will be offering a course on pharmacogenomics for health care providers starting March 8.
The eight-week Interprofessional Clinical Pharmacogenomics Certificate Program will be offered to both pharmacists and physicians for 16 hours of continuing education (CME/ACPE).
It is an interactive practice-based program designed to equip physicians and pharmacists with greater readiness, confidence, and advocacy for optimizing medication management using pharmacogenomic data. The program will provide participants with a broad knowledge of fundamental pharmacogenomic principles and enhance their overall capacity to apply this information across multiple therapeutic areas in various practice settings to improve the delivery of patient care.
The last day to register for the spring course will be March 15.
Pharmacogenomics, a budding field of personalized medicine, is the study of how genes influence an individual’s response to treatment with medications. Drug-related morbidity and mortality due to unoptimized medication therapy is estimated to cost the United States $528 billion annually. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adverse drug events have been categorized as a leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
Pharmacogenomics provides health care professionals with informative guidance from the very beginning of treatment to prevent toxicity and improve overall effectiveness of medication use.
Together, the mapping of the human genome project completed in 2003 and advances in technology have accelerated pharmacogenomic discovery broadening its clinical utility in practice settings.
Professional pharmacy organizations such as American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP) support efforts to incorporate pharmacogenomics into clinical practice. Therefore, education of health care professionals is critical to keep pace with the rapidly evolving field of pharmacogenomics.
Take a look at the video below by the WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences to learn more.
