I have been talking a lot about prescription drugs and how it affects your employee benefit program. My Blog has spoken about abuse, non adherence, and the last webinar I attended, given by Telus Health, was about Pharmacogenetics.
What is Pharmacogenetics? It is the study of how the actions of and reactions to drugs vary with the patient’s genes.
The challenge for physicians is every individual is profoundly different in how they handle medications. All of the below matter:
- Age
- Gender
- Weight
- Kidney Function and
- Liver function
90% of the population have at least 1 genetic variant in the enzymes responsible for drug metabolism. For a given drug, genetic variations result in patients being classified as:
- Poor Metabolizers,
- Normal Metabolizers, or
- Ultra Metabolizers
The test only needs to be taken once in a person’s lifetime. Why is it not being done now? Because the results come to your Doctor in a 60 page report and they don’t always have the knowledge or the time to analyze the results. The ultimate would be a computer generated report that analyzes the results for the Doctor and would give them easy access to it.
To discuss this and other areas of your Employee Benefit Program, contact, Glendinning Insurance Services.