Comparative Health-Care Cost Advantage of Ipratropium over Tiotropium in COPD Patients

Objective: To compare the total direct health-care costs of patients treated with tiotropium and ipratropium. Methods: We conducted a cohort study of health-care costs in British Columbia, Canada, by comparing new patients on tiotropium with new patients on ipratropium. Direct health-care costs for study patients were measured in the first 2 years after initiating inhaled anticholinergic treatment. Differences in direct health-care costs between tiotropium and ipratropium patients were estimated by using quantile regression. We analyzed cost differences in the 10th percentile, median, and 90th percentile of patients by cost. High-dimensional propensity score analysis was used as a method of adjustment for potential confounding factors. Results: The study population had 3,140 tiotropium patients and 26,182 ipratropium patients. Higher health system costs in patients who started on tiotropium instead of ipratropium were observed in patients in the median and 10th percentile. The magnitude of these increases was comparable to the price difference between the two drugs. Health system costs in the 90th percentile were not significantly different between tiotropium and ipratropium patients. Conclusions: The results of this study did not support the preferential use of tiotropium over ipratropium as a basis for savings in direct health-care costs

Provincial Data-linkage to Address Complex Policy Challenges

Introduction The Province of British Columbia, Canada has established a Data Innovation Program (DI Program) and a Data Science Partnerships Program (DSP Program) to use integrated public-sector data to drive insights into complex policy challenges and support the public good. These programs are a part of the province's new Integrated Data. Objectives and Approach The DI Program was built to enable policy decisions based on a more complete picture of the citizen journey across and throughout government programs. It provides a privacy and security framework for corporate data analytics and a cross-government secure research environment. The DSP Program provides analytics and/or project support for high-priority cross-government projects. The opportunity afforded by this approach to policy decision-making is that valuable data and evidence from multiple sectors can be utilized to make positive changes in the lives of citizens. Results The IDO has partnered with cross government experts on a series of pilot projects that used linked data spanning social services, families and households, education, and health and clinical records. Research topics ranged from the prediction of risk of long-term unemployment, to the impact of the foreign home buyers tax, to the effectiveness of labour market programs. Throughout our presentation we will use these projects as case examples to address the benefits and opportunities provided through our citizen-centred, integrated approach. Conclusion/Implications The future of policy decision-making in terms of service delivery relies on mutually beneficial collaboration and the evidence-based insight available through integrated data. Moving forward, it is essential that researchers across government make the most out of integrated population-level data to solve pressing issues affecting the lives of citizens

Ceramic supports with highly dense and aligned pores for moltencarbonate based CO2 separation membranes

Resumen del trabajo presentado a la XVII Conference Ceramics in Europe, celebrada en Krakow (Poland), del 10 al 14 de julio de 2022.Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and Feder Funds grants MAT2016-77769R and BES-2017-079683; Departamento de Ciencia, Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento del Gobierno de Aragón through the financial support to the Research Group T02 20R.N

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Comparative Health-Care Cost Advantage of Ipratropium over Tiotropium in COPD Patients

AbstractObjectiveTo compare the total direct health-care costs of patients treated with tiotropium and ipratropium.MethodsWe conducted a cohort study of health-care costs in British Columbia, Canada, by comparing new patients on tiotropium with new patients on ipratropium. Direct health-care costs for study patients were measured in the first 2 years after initiating inhaled anticholinergic treatment. Differences in direct health-care costs between tiotropium and ipratropium patients were estimated by using quantile regression. We analyzed cost differences in the 10th percentile, median, and 90th percentile of patients by cost. High-dimensional propensity score analysis was used as a method of adjustment for potential confounding factors.ResultsThe study population had 3,140 tiotropium patients and 26,182 ipratropium patients. Higher health system costs in patients who started on tiotropium instead of ipratropium were observed in patients in the median and 10th percentile. The magnitude of these increases was comparable to the price difference between the two drugs. Health system costs in the 90th percentile were not significantly different between tiotropium and ipratropium patients.ConclusionsThe results of this study did not support the preferential use of tiotropium over ipratropium as a basis for savings in direct health-care costs