Center for Medication Safety and Efficacy

The Center for Medication Safety and Efficacy is working to improve medication safety through research by identifying the incidence and significance of adverse drug events that occur with prescription and non-prescription drugs. Under the direction of Endowed Chair Dr. Charlest Bennett, the Center’s two partner organizations seek to develop and implement strategies to reduce medication errors—the largest source of adverse medical events in hospitals—and related costs. The research produced by the Medication Safety and Efficacy Center of Economic Excellence (CoEE) is expected to have significant cost-saving benefits for the state, potentially reducing health care costs in South Carolina by ten percent over the next five to ten years.

Dr. Bennett was recruited as the pharmacoepidemiology and economics endowed chair in early 2010. He holds his position at the University of South Carolina. Prior to accepting the endowed chair, Dr. Bennett spent more than 20 years as a hematologist and oncologist researching pharmaceutical safety and efficacy. Since 1987, the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Defense have supported his research. Dr. Bennett’s work also involved the creation of the Research on Adverse Drug Events and Reports (RADAR) program, an academic pharmaceutical safety program that is responsible for the identification and reporting of 43 potentially fatal adverse drug reactions.