Completed 

Drug therapy is the mainstay of treatment for persons with inflammatory bowel disease. The main goals of drug-based therapy are to: (i) improve quality of life through reducing disease-related symptoms and; (ii) prevent the development of serious complications leading to hospitalization, surgery or repeated administration of corticosteroids to control disease activity. There are many drugs currently available for treatment of IBD, with many more in development. Moreover, there is great variability in patient disease characteristics and physician practice preferences which influence how well a drug treatment plan works in a person with IBD. While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide evidence for efficacy of a medication in a group of patients with similar disease characteristics and rigorous follow-up, they do not provide evidence that a drug will be effective in clinical practice, in which there is much greater diversity in patient populations and practice patterns. Furthermore, the scope covered by expensive RCTs is limited and there are many questions concerning the optimal use of medications that have not and will not be answered by RCTs. Therefore, there is a great need for research into the effectiveness of medications in treating IBD in clinical practice based on real-life data. We aim to use medical records maintained by Canadian provincial health care systems to assess how specific medications are impacting the rates of IBD-related hospitalizations, surgeries, and corticosteroid use in clinical practice. We will also use these databases to compare direct health care costs and health care utilization strategies among persons with IBD, focusing on how the use of medications can affect the costs of care. We also hope to develop a user interface to share these results with patients, physicians, and payers.