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Identification of Potential Drug Name Confusion Errors in the Sentinel System

    Basic Details
    Date
    Type
    Publication
    Medical Product
    Brilinta
    Brintellix
    Health Outcome(s)
    medication error
    Description

    In July 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a drug safety communication regarding errors in prescribing and dispensing of the antidepressant Brintellix (vortioxetine) and the antiplatelet Brilinta (ticagrelor) that arose due to proprietary drug name confusion. Brintellix is indicated for major depressive disorder; Brilinta is indicated to reduce cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and stroke in patients with acute coronary syndrome or history of myocardial infarction. Brintellix was renamed to Trintellix in May 2016. Using Brilinta and Brintellix as a proof‐of‐concept feasibility use case, we assessed whether drug name confusion errors between the pair could be identified in electronic health care data via the combination of a claims‐based algorithm and limited manual claims data review.

    Information
    Data Source(s)
    Sentinel Distributed Database (SDD)
    Author(s)

    Noelle M. Cocoros, Kevin Haynes, Qoua Her, Austin Cosgrove, Elizabeth Dee, Nancy D. Lin, Chi‐Ming Tu, Yulan Ding, Michael Nguyen, Sengwee Toh

    Corresponding Author

    Noelle M. Cocoros, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, MA, USA. 
    Email: noelle_cocoros@harvardpilgrim.org