Background: In Germany, adverse drug reactions and events cause hospitalizations, which lead to numerous thousands of deaths and several million Euros in additional health costs annually.
Objectives: Approximately one in two deaths could be avoided by an appropriate system for risk analysis of drugs.
Methods: The integration and storage of several data sources from life sciences are an ongoing need to address various questions with respect to drug therapy. A software architecture for data integration was implemented in order to build up a new data warehouse named KALIS-DWH, which includes pharmacological, biomolecular and patient-related data.
Results: Based on this comprehensive KALIS-DWH, an eHealth system named KALIS for biomedical risk analysis of drugs was implemented. The task-specific modules of KALIS offer efficient algorithms for analyzing medication and supporting decision-making in drug therapy.
Conclusion: KALIS is meant to be a web-based information system for health professionals and researchers. KALIS provides comprehensive knowledge and modules for risk analysis of drugs, which can contribute to minimizing prescribing errors.
Keywords: Adverse Drug Reaction; Computer-Assisted Drug Therapy; Drug Interactions; Drug Side Effects; Information Systems; Medication errors; eHealth.