A Pharmaco-cybernetics Approach to Designing an Oncology Drug Interaction Database for Clinical Practice

This chapter describes how OncoRx-MI, a pharmaco-informatics platform for detecting chemotherapy interactions, was designed through a pharmaco-cybernetics approach targeting the 5 activities of the digital health innovation process. This is the first database of its kind that is able to provide interaction information for anticancer drugs and chemotherapy regimen cocktails. In order to identify the gap and determine the usefulness of this database in clinical oncology practice, the quality of online anticancer drug interactions was assessed, and the perceptions of oncology practitioners were sought. The results showed that the accuracy of drug interaction content and the clinical usefulness of the database was highly regarded by these practitioners. In addition, evidence of its relevance and credibility was demonstrated through user feedback on the database.