Modelling population-level drug use with demographic and geographic approaches and techniques

Within the field of pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety as in the wider field of epidemiology focus has been on individual-level studies. However, the impact of drug use for the society as a whole cannot directly be inferred from such studies and population-level causal designs are required. For example, for health policy it is crucial to know the role of drugs in affecting regional, national or international morbidity and mortality trends. Similarly, predicting (future) levels of local health care and drug use is essential for prevention purposes, targeted allocation of care and meeting health demands. Moreover, actual end users of drugs in society may largely differ from clinical trial populations [1,2] used to study the efficacy of drugs for registration purposes [3].