This cluster aims to provide new knowledge to make healthcare more efficient and sustainable by understanding and addressing the factors influencing medicines behaviour.
The development of evidence-based interventions to optimise treatment behaviours (e.g. practitioner prescribing and patient adherence) is a core aspect of our work. We consider the role of psychosocial factors in determining the physiological effects of treatment. Studies of placebo and nocebo mechanisms methods for enhancing the non-specific beneficial effects of treatments (‘placebo’ responses) and minimising the non-specific adverse effects (‘nocebo’ responses).
Research topics
Research within the cluster draws on a wide range of disciplines including health psychology epidemiology, sociology, anthropology, health economics, engineering and healthcare law and ethics. The cluster has extensive collaborations throughout 911±¬ÁÏÍø, particularly within the SLMS Faculty of Population Health Sciences. Through these links and a range of national and international collaborations the cluster provides new knowledge to facilitate the cost-effective use of medicines and other treatments.
Research areas include:
- The development of evidence-based interventions to support optimal adherence and persistence to appropriately prescribed treatments for long-term conditions and infectious diseases.
- Developing valid and reliable methods for assessing user perspectives of illness, treatment and healthcare.
- Assessing public perceptions of medicines and how perceptions (and other factors) influence the use and effects of medicines.
- Applying new technologies (e.g. e-communication) and interfaces (e.g. social media) to enhance patient engagement with care and to improve patient-practitioner communication.
- Developing interventions to improve the outcomes of treatments by enhancing nonspecific positive effects (‘placebo’ responses) and reducing nonspecific negative effects (‘nocebo’ responses).
- Understanding prescribing behaviour and developing interventions to optimise prescribing.
- Antibiotic stewardship and developing interventions to improve antibiotic usage by understanding and optimising demand for antibiotics and prescribing behaviour.
- Applying pharmacoepidemiologial techniques to understand patterns of prescribing and adherence, and so to identify priorities for interventions to optimise medication-related behaviour (prescribing and adherence.
- Mind-body interactions in health and illness.
Funding
Researchers in this cluster receive funding from:
- National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)
- MRC
- Welcome Trust
- BUPA Foundation
- Asthma UK
- Crohn’s & Colitis UK
- the Health Foundation
Collaborations
- CASMI and work with Academy of Medical Sciences
- AUK CAR
- CLAHRC North Thames