About the Warfarin Project
The Warfarin Project was born out of the Delivering Digital Drugs (D3) Project, as an alternative way of presenting research data.
We didn't just want to publish academic papers, although that is part of how we are evaluated as a successful project and how we communicate with other academics.
We wanted a site which presents short videos on warfarin, presented by experts in the fields of research, pharmacy and medicine management.
Some of the academic papers from the project are presented here, on this website. In addition you will find a series of short films on warfarin.
These films are not intended to present a full and complete picture of the medicine - that would take years. Instead, they are intended to answer many questions about the drug, including its history, why doctors find it hard to prescribe it and what effect does genetics have on warfarin?
These films, papers, photographs are intended to be enjoyed in any order, according to what interests the visitor.
They are supplemented with a resources page which links to a variety of non-profits, charities and further resources for information.
About the D3 Project
The Delivering Digital Drugs (D3) Project is an EPSRC funded investigation into the digitization of medicine today. Started in November 2014, we conclude in April 2017.
This research pioneers a new area of study, that of 'digital drugs'.
The project looks at the way health care is increasingly reliant on medicines as a primary therapeutic means. This includes how medicines are increasingly developed, delivered and how they are regulated through a reliance on associated and accompanying data and information technologies. In this sense medicines are becoming more and more digitalised, embedded in and constituted by a rich and rapidly changing data ecosystem.
Thus as people work with and use medicines, they work with not just a specific chemical or molecule in a standard dose, but with a lot of digital resources and information services that let them refine these uses. Medicines are now a hybrid, in part physical product (a chemical), part an informational product (data and information), and part a service (algorithms) that a user interacts with.
The project brings together people with different backgrounds to share knowledge and understanding about current and future developments in how medicines are used and the digital systems they are embedded in.
Using theories and models from studies of the digital economy – concepts such as digital materiality, platforms, digital business models, open innovation – we set new agendas for researchers, business and NHS managers, clinical professionals and policy makers. We will enable better strategy-making among key stakeholders as well as spurring further research.
Click here to visit the project website and blog.
How do we think about medications?
On the project we looked at medications in several ways. Firstly, we looked at the materiality of a medication such as warfarin. This involves taking another look at the obvious and defamiliarising it. We looked at the history of warfarin, how it is described in medical texts like the British National Formulary (BNF), what it looks like and what new research tells us about the drug. We looked at how this all affects the way it is produced, packaged, handled and managed within supply chains, hospitals, pharmacies and by patients in their own homes.
Then we looked at the digital materiality of warfarin. In other words: how warfarin and all the situations we see it in have become digitized over the past 30 years or so. We asked: what effects do electronic prescribing or home testing machines have on how warfarin is used? Can we say the medicine, or the information surrounding it has changed? And, if so, what effects do these changes have for clinical professions or for patients?