This online course is part of a set of training activities offered by Pharmacometrics Africa to support the development of pharmacometric competency and expertise in Africa and low and middle income countries.
Pharmacometrics is the science of developing and applying mathematical and statistical models to characterize, understand and predict a drug's pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and biomaker-outcome behavior. By using pharmacometrics, researchers can model the characteristics of new drugs to simulate and predict their behavior, which can then enable more efficient development of new drugs and to improve use of existing drugs.
The Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacometrics course comprises ten lessons which cover key aspects of clinical pharmacology and mathematical modelling that underpin the principles of pharmacometrics.
Participants conduct self-study on each lesson over 1 week, and then join a live tutorial at the end of the week during which a faculty member discusses the week’s materials and any exercises that were assigned. These tutorials are recorded for off-line viewing for those who might experience difficulties with internet connectivity. All participants are assigned into small groups under the mentorship of a member of the course faculty. The course faculty are subject matter experts - they update content, design the lesson assignments and tasks, participate in online discussions, summarize the weekly discussion threads, conduct or support the weekly live tutorials, mentor participants and prepare assessments on the performance of the participants in their tutor groups.
Please click here to access a detailed faculty profiles document. Online learning specialists from the Infectious Diseases Institute upload all content, guide all course participants on how to use the Virtual Learning Environment, maintain communication, document course processes and offer continuous technical support throughout the course. Please click here to access a detailed profiles document for the IDI e-learning team.
The lessons are as follows:
Lesson One
Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacometrics:
Lesson Two
Absorption and Distribution:
Lesson Three
Elimination:
Lesson Four
Pharmacokinetics after single dose administration:
Lesson Five
Pharmacokinetics at steady state:
Lesson Six
Pharmacology:
Lesson Seven
Mathematical implementation of pharmacokinetic Models:
Lesson Eight
Mathematical implementation of Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic Models:
Lesson Nine
Fundamentals of Biostatistics:
Lesson Ten
Data Analysis and Regression:
Acknowledgements and History
The materials presented in this course have been extensively updated.
The original course was previously developed and made available under creative commons principles, as open-access from Hibernia College, Dublin using grant funds from Novartis Pharma AG and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Hibernia College presented this course in 2014. A course with similar training content was presented by Karolinska Institutet, Sweden in 2015.
In May 2019, a modification of the original same course was implemented and run for the first time in Africa by the Infectious Diseases Institute, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University. A report on this course is available here.
.Click here to access course content