Researcher profile: Elisabet Nielsen leads the way to optimized drug treatments
“We strive to be a frontline environment for research and education in clinical pharmacy and pharmacotherapy,” says Professor Elisabet Nielsen, who, together with her team, is gearing up to lead the way to safe, appropriate and cost-effective drug use in healthcare.
Clinical pharmacy is a science that is becoming increasingly important as we live longer and gain access to even more advanced drug treatments. Several Swedish Regions have already integrated pharmacists into their healthcare teams. As health centers, nursing homes and home care also recruit pharmaceutical experts, the need for new skills and knowledge increases, and in 2024 Elisabet Nielsen was recruited to Uppsala University’s newly established professorship in Clinical pharmacy.
Elisabeth Nielsen, Professor of Clinical Pharmacy
“Our research group is part of the Faculty of Pharmacy’s long-term investment in better drug use, and we are now set in our new premises that we share with the teams in Social Pharmacy and Pharmacoepidemiology. Here, researchers and teachers work with the same challenges but from complementary perspectives, an approach that I am convinced will generate exactly the interdisciplinary strengths we need.”
When Elisabet Nielsen achieved her Degree of Master of Science in Pharmacy in 1998, clinical pharmacy was already growing, not least in the USA and the UK, but in Sweden the subject had not yet found its way into the education catalogues. Since then, development has accelerated, and Uppsala University currently offers both freestanding courses and the one-year Master's Programme in Clinical Pharmacy.
“Safe, appropriate and cost-effective use of medicines is necessary in all parts of healthcare. We already offer clinical training in a majority of the Sweden's Regions, but are working to create even more study places for all students and professionals who aim to expand their expertise in this area.”
In parallel with her commitment to education, Elisabet Nielsen has built, following her dissertation in 2011, a research unit in clinical pharmacy. Together, they have published a number of highly publicized studies in collaboration with healthcare. These include Henrik Cam's PhD project highlighting better medication communication at discharge that is currently tested in an intervention study. Recently, Maria Swartling defended her thesis focusing on optimized antibiotic use.
Maria Swartling and Elisabet Nielsen, Department of Pharmacy
“Optimal dosage is a key component of every antibiotic treatment. Therefore, we have developed a workflow for model-based precision dosing that we are currently testing in a pilot study at Uppsala University Hospital's Blood and Tumor Diseases Division. We are currently working with a focus on vancomycin, but in the long term aim to implement our model as a platform solution in other areas that require precision dosing.”
The research group is also about to launch a project where they, funded by the Swedish Research Council, will map the possibilities to apply time-lase microscopy to more quickly identify effective and individualized antibiotic treatments. The method – expected to be of particular value against difficult-to-treat infections caused by multi-resistant bacteria – combines image analysis, machine learning and mathematical modeling.
“Pharmaceutical expertise is extremely important in both team-based healthcare and clinical research. With clinical pharmacy still being a young profession, research enables anchoring as well as room for development. We’re on the threshold of a future where technological progress will alter healthcare and pave the way for new opportunities to monitor health data, in turn creating opportunities to accomplish the optimized and personalized drug treatment that is our goal.”
Facts
- Clinical pharmacy and pharmacotherapy aim to develop and promote rational and appropriate use of medications.
- The field is characterized by multiprofessional work, with the patient in focus
- Elisabet Nielsen’s research unit evaluate both therapy area-specific issues and clinical pharmaceutical work methods, with the overall goal of achieving optimized medication use.
text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Mikael Wallerstedt