The pediatric knowledge base

The pediatric knowledge base (PKB) is an IT system developed at the Pediatric Pharmacology Unit of the Children’s Philadelphia Hospital. This project involved professionals from several disciplines, such as medicine, pharmacology, statistics, bioinformatics. They built a model in which clinical data from patient were combined with electronic medical records and drug profiling, in order to obtain an IT tool able to continuously learn information about the patients self.
PKB helps physicians to choose the better pharmacological therapy in terms of dose, agent performance, collateral effects and drug combination. Based on the profile of three common drugs, such as vancomycin, methotrexate and tacrolimus considered as prototype, PKB monitors the drug use and helps to predict the outcomes in children patients that are often more difficult to treat. PKB is updated by numerous hospital members, in this way deep knowledge about clinical adverse events or clinical advantages as well as innovative protocol can be shortly acquired with great benefits for patients. Furthermore, PKB is web based and it could be shared between hospitals of different countries. A consortium is planning to be created to coordinate PKB implementation across the world. Using PKB as a model, it could be possible to set up similar dashboard for other class of patients in the next future.