Evidence for assessing drug safety and drug use in older people

Prescribing for older patients presents several challenges. Older people often suffer from two or more chronic diseases (multimorbidity) and therefore use a greater number of medications compared to other age groups. As a result, they are more susceptible polypharmacy, and associated drug-related problems, including potentially inappropriate medication (PIM), drug ineffectiveness, drug interactions, and adverse drug events (Nobili et al., 2011; Aggarwal et al., 2020). Consequently, optimizing drug therapy is a crucial part of caring for an elderly individual. This is increasingly important given the rising number of elderlies across countries in the coming years, with one in 6 of the world’s population over 60 by 2050 and the associated resource implications (World Health Organization, 2021).