Yann Thoma
HEIG-VD
Monitoring of circulating drug concentrations in the patients, also called “therapeutic drug monitoring” (TDM), represents the best way to optimize drug dosage and prevent toxicity or lack of effectiveness, when no accurate efficacy markers are measurable. Still TDM has slowly developed until recently, because both the drug measurement and the interpretation of concentration results were demanding. During the last decade, laboratory technologies have markedly progressed and no longer represent a limiting factor. At present, dozens of drugs can be easily analyzed. A prerequisite for the wide accessibility of TDM to all patients that require it is that physicians, pharmacists, nurses and even patients can easily interpret drug concentration results and adjust therapies accordingly.
Tucuxi [1] is a unique software solution for the optimization of drug treatments by health professionals, based on concentration monitoring:
- Its natural workflow makes it of unequaled user-friendliness.
- Its versatility enables it to accommodate almost any drug, for which population pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic data are available.
- Its graphical presentation of concentration results makes the clinical interpretation of TDM crystal-clear.
- Its connectivity to laboratory information systems enables its full integration in the analytical process.
The graphical user interface is complemented by its core computing engine which can be run independently for retrospective studies, automating the validation of new models for a specific population.
New popPK models can be added by the user, thanks to a drug model editor [2]. Therefore, anyone can create new models and share them with the community.
Tucuxi is the result of several years of research and development. Its development was initiated by the Service of clinical pharmacology of the university hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) in Switzerland, a precursor and active contributor in TDM. Its implementation was conducted by the School of engineering and management of the canton Vaud (HEIG-VD).
Tucuxi is now available as an Open Source software [3].
References:
[1] https://www.tucuxi.ch/
[2] https://drugeditor.tucuxi.ch/
[3] https://github.com/sotalya
Reference: PAGE 32 (2024) Abstr 10892 [www.page-meeting.org/?abstract=10892]
Poster: Software Demonstration