Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway.
Department of Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway.
Res Social Adm Pharm. 2021 Dec;17(12):2054-2061. doi: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2021.06.021. Epub 2021 Jun 29.
Network Analysis (NA) is a method that has been used in various disciplines such as Social sciences and Ecology for decades. So far, NA has not been used extensively in studies of medication use. Only a handful of papers have used NA in Drug Prescription Networks (DPN). We provide an introduction to NA terminology alongside a guide to creating and extracting results from the medication networks.
To introduce the readers to NA as a tool to study medication use by demonstrating how to apply different NA measures on 3 generated medication networks.
We used the Norwegian Prescription Database (NorPD) to create a network that describes the co-medication in elderly persons in Norway on January 1, 2013. We used the Norwegian Electronic Prescription Support System (FEST) to create another network of severe drug-drug interactions (DDIs). Lastly, we created a network combining the two networks to show the actual use of drugs with severe DDIs. We used these networks to elucidate how to apply and interpret different network measures in medication networks.
Interactive network graphs are made available online, Stata and R syntaxes are provided. Various useful network measures for medication networks were applied such as network topological features, modularity analysis and centrality measures. Edge lists data used to generate the networks are openly available for readers in an open data repository to explore and use.
We believe that NA can be a useful tool in medication use studies. We have provided information and hopefully inspiration for other researchers to use NA in their own projects. While network analyses are useful for exploring and discovering structures in medication use studies, it also has limitations. It can be challenging to interpret and it is not suitable for hypothesis testing.
网络分析（NA）是一种已在社会科学和生态学等多个学科中使用了数十年的方法。到目前为止，NA 在药物使用研究中并未得到广泛应用。只有少数几篇论文在药物处方网络（DPN）中使用了 NA。我们提供了一个 NA 术语介绍以及创建和提取药物网络结果的指南。
通过演示如何在 3 个生成的药物网络上应用不同的 NA 度量，向读者介绍 NA 作为研究药物使用的工具。
我们使用挪威处方数据库（NorPD）创建了一个网络，描述了 2013 年 1 月 1 日挪威老年人的共用药情况。我们使用挪威电子处方支持系统（FEST）创建了另一个严重药物相互作用（DDI）的药物网络。最后，我们创建了一个组合两个网络的网络，以显示具有严重 DDI 的实际药物使用情况。我们使用这些网络来说明如何在药物网络中应用和解释不同的网络度量。
提供了交互式网络图，并提供了 Stata 和 R 语法。应用了各种有用的药物网络网络度量，如网络拓扑特征、模块性分析和中心性度量。生成网络使用的边列表数据在开放数据存储库中公开提供，供读者探索和使用。
我们相信 NA 可以成为药物使用研究的有用工具。我们为其他研究人员在自己的项目中使用 NA 提供了信息和希望。虽然网络分析对于探索和发现药物使用研究中的结构很有用，但它也有局限性。它的解释具有挑战性，不适合进行假设检验。
