Fast And Frugal Trees: Translating Population-Based Pharmacogenomics to Medication Prioritization

Abstract

Aim: Fast and frugal decision trees (FFTs) can simplify clinical decision making by providing a heuristic approach to contextual guidance. We wanted to use FFTs for pharmacogenomic knowledge translation at point-of-care. Materials & Methods: The Pharmacogenomics for Every Nation Initiative (PGENI), an international nonprofit organization, collects data on regional polymorphisms as a predictor of metabolism for individual drugs and dosages. We advanced FFTs to work with PGENI pharmacogenomic data to produce medication recommendations that are accurate, transparent and straightforward to automate. Results: By streamlining medication selection processes in the PGENI workflow, information technology applications can now be deployed. Conclusion: We developed a decision tree approach that can translate pharmacogenomic data to provide up-to-date recommended care for populations based on their medication-specific markers.

Keywords::

• clinical decision support
• eHealth
• fast and frugal decision trees
• information technology
• knowledge translation
• medication prioritization
• personalized medicine
• pharmacogenomics
• point-of-care
• software agent

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge M Jenny for her helpful comments and suggestions.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

T van Rooij was supported by an Alberta Innovates Doctoral Graduate Student Scholarship and a Mike Wolowyk Graduate Scholarship. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

T van Rooij was supported by an Alberta Innovates Doctoral Graduate Student Scholarship and a Mike Wolowyk Graduate Scholarship. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.