A new digital tool, developed by researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, will provide real-time insights into prescribing trends in Ireland. The interactive platform, known as RxTrends, enables healthcare professionals, policymakers and researchers to analyse national prescribing patterns, offering a valuable resource for decision-making and policy development.

The RxTrends application is the first of-its-kind in Ireland, using publicly available data from the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS).

It allows users to visualise and compare prescribing rates and costs for medications and therapeutic groups over time, giving a clearer picture of medicine usage across the country.

The tool is available to access here.

“Understanding how medicines are prescribed and how costs evolve over time is crucial for improving healthcare policy and practice,” said Professor Frank Moriarty, Associate Professor at RCSI’s School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences who led on the development of the application. “RxTrends provides a user-friendly way to analyse prescribing data, which can help us to ensure more efficient use of medicines, to understand how prescribing aligns with national recommendations, how generic medicines can save costs for the health service and the impact of new policies.”

The application was developed by Professor Moriarty and Dr Ahmed Hassan Ali, Postdoctoral Researcher at RCSI School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, using the R-based Shiny framework and incorporates prescribing and cost data from 2016 to the most recent available data, covering the 100 most frequently prescribed medicines and all therapeutic groups. Users can track trends by selecting specific medicines or broader therapeutic categories, making the tool highly flexible and informative.

Key functionality of the tool includes:

• Graphs and trend analyses of medication use and costs over time.
• Download data for the time frame and medications of interest.
• The ability to assess the proportion of prescribing for a medication within therapeutic groups.
• Using the data to explore how medication use changes based on seasonal trends or policies like Ireland’s Preferred Drug Initiative and the introduction of generic medicines.

While RxTrends represents an important step forward in monitoring medication use in Ireland, researchers emphasise that further improvements could be made with access to more detailed prescribing data.

The development of RxTrends was part of the CDRx project funded by the Health Research Board and developed with collaborators in University College Cork and the Health Service Executive (HSE). The approach for developing the tool has been documented in a newly published paper detailing its methodology and potential applications.

For more information on RxTrends, visit cdrx-project.eu.