News

September 2026

Two PhD students from the LEAPfROG project, Keano Simmons and Daniel Fernandez-Llaneza, presented their work at the Annual Meeting of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) in Milan.

Keano introduced a digital tool that helps clinicians judge whether a medication caused a patient’s acute kidney injury.

ISPE 42nd Annual Meeting Keano Simmons

Daniel presented a study on how pain medication is used in hospital practice, looking at how well prescribing follows clinical guidelines.

ISPE 42nd Annual Meeting Daniel Fernandez-Llaneza

Both talks showed how routinely collected hospital data can be used to make medication use safer and more effective.

June 2026

The second PharmacoInformatics Summer School ran for five days, using drug-induced kidney injury as a running example to show how data and information technology can make medication safer. The first day was organized together with the ICT committee of the Dutch association of hospital pharmacists (NVZA). The first day trained future Chief Pharmacy Information Officers, who guide digital developments in hospital pharmacies. Topics included the Dutch healthcare ICT landscape, the national drug database G-Standaard, design thinking, and the skills a CPIO needs, plus examples of data-driven innovation. Sixteen (hospital) pharmacists took part and rated the whole Summer School 8.4 out of 10.

Summer School – PharmacoInformatics Lab

March 2026

Two manuscripts pertaining to two sub-studies within LEAPfROG project were published (see also Publications overview).

Acute kidney injury is a common and serious problem for hospital patients, and some medication can cause it. Yet doctors rarely diagnose or record medication-induced kidney injury. To understand why, researchers interviewed 13 physicians at a Dutch hospital. Doctors said that treating the acute kidney injury comes first, so finding its cause often gets less attention, especially when several factors are involved. Kidney function is usually well monitored, but in urgent situations, necessary medications may be given despite their risks. Physicians asked for up-to-date medication overviews, clear monitoring guidance, and better risk prediction. The study calls for greater awareness, better diagnosis, and personalized prevention.

Hospital physicians’ reasoning and information needs in the diagnosis and prevention of drug-induced acute kidney injury: a qualitative study | BMC Nephrology | Springer Nature Link

Hospitals primarly collect electronic patient records for patient care. Yet, this data is increasingly used to train medical AI tools. Researchers explored the ethical problems this creates, using LEAPfROG as case study. They reviewed 25 publications and held two workshops with patients, doctors, ethicists, and AI developers. Four concerns emerged: privacy and meaningful consent, public trust and patchy regulation, fair representation of all patient groups, and responsible use of AI tools in daily patient care. Data can lose meaning when reused, so its purpose must be clear. Ethical AI needs input from patients, clinicians, and data custodians, not just technical fixes or rules.

Journal of Medical Internet Research – The Ethics of Leveraging Routinely Collected Patient Data for AI Development: Mixed Methods Study

22-04-2025

A chronic kidney disease cohort in electronic health records can be identified through so called electronic phenotypes (e-phenotypes). However, available e-phenotypes, defined by logical rules, lack consensus and are often inconsistently aligned with the Kidney Disease – Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) guideline for CKD (KDIGO-CKD). In our latest study, we investigated six logical rules in routinely collected EHR data from adults hospitalized at Amsterdam University Medical Centre (2018–2023).

Pooling six logical rules resulted in identifying 17 805 hospitalized CKD patients (16.4%), showcasing varying CKD patient counts per rule (with proportions ranging from 2.1% to 8.4%). Nonetheless, baseline characteristics across cohorts were comparable. Our findings highlight the need to formalize the CKD clinical definition into a computer-interpretable one, to avoid inconsistencies in EHR implementation across studies.

Identifying a cohort of hospitalized chronic kidney disease patients using electronic health records: lessons learnt and implications for future research and clinical practice guidelines | Clinical Kidney Journal | Oxford Academic

17-10-2024

Medication use can lead to acute kidney injury. Approximately 30% of the acute kidney injuries could potentially be prevented by changing the medication. We would like to increase the knowledge on drug-induced acute kidney injury. Therefore, we collected existing knowledge on 63 drugs with acute kidney injury potential from various sources (i.e. (bio)medical expert consensus literature, spontaneous report databases, drug information databases, NephroTox website) and integrated these into one novel, comprehensive resource. In our resource, antivirals, antibiotics, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are highly associated with acute kidney injury. Want to read more? Check our article in Drug Safety:

An Integrated Approach for Representing Knowledge on the Potential of Drugs to Cause Acute Kidney Injury | Drug Safety (springer.com)

10-06-2024

Today, a researcher of the LEAPfROG team conducted an interview with two kidney patients. Both interviewed patients have a long history of treatment for their kidney problems, including dialysis and multiple transplantations. Their story is impressive and inspiring. This publication is a short summary of the interview with the answers combined, anonymously, to preserve the privacy of the interviewees.

Can you shortly tell something about yourself and your medical history?

I suffer from a kidney disease since I was a teenager/young adult. Focusing on lifestyle and a strict diet, dialysis could be postponed. Since then, the treatment has included multiple medications (350,000+ pills and injections!), dialysis, and several kidney transplantations. At the moment, both patients have a donor kidney of around 5 years and more than 10 years.

How many chronic medications are you using?

I use a combination of 3 medications which suppress the immune system to prevent kidney rejection: prednisolone, tacrolimus, mycophenolate mofetil / azathioprine. In addition to these, I use 4-7 other chronic medications, including blood pressure drugs and a stomach protector.

What are your experiences with your medication use?

I have many complications, next to my kidney disease. It is difficult to distinguish whether these problems are drug-related, problems due to the kidney disease or for example age-related. Two are clearly drug-related: “I suffer from skin cancer due to the immune suppressive drugs.” and “tacrolimus use has let to a decline in function of a previous donor kidney”.

In what way do you expect that LEAPfROG can contribute to the healthcare of the future?

The results of the LEAPfROG study would ideally lead to advices on an individual and on a more general level. “It would be fantastic if you can get an individual prediction for the ideal medication, without side effects and with a good effect.” At the moment, information about the use and intake for the combination of drugs is missing. “Most of the medications, I just use in one go in the morning. It would be a gain if LEAPfROG would result in information about the use of certain combinations and their drug-drug interactions.”

What would be the ideal role of patient participation in the LEAPfROG study?

By including experiences of patients, researchers have contact with the patient. This way, it is more about the human. It helps researchers to keep motivated and to make a real impact on the lives of patients.

08-05-2024

LEAPfROG researchers will be at the ICPE 2024 in Berlin! The first LEAPfROG results will be presented in a poster format. In this sub-study, we explored the association between Proton pump inhibitors (PPI) and acute kidney injury (AKI) in expert consensus studies, spontaneous reporting systems and drug information databases. We combined all information into one single resource. Curious? Come find us at the ICPE 2024. Later this year, we will also publish the poster on the website. We hope to see you in Berlin!

17-01-2024

The annual in-person meeting of the LEAPfROG consortium took place. During the meeting, we delved into our progress and had productive interactions for the development of AI-based models for drug-induced kidney disease in people with chronic kidney disease. It’s great to meet in person at this stage of the LEAPfROG project!

29-11-2023

The first Guidance-Ethics Session took place! This was organized together with The Platform for the Information Society (ECP) with the aim to identify ethical implications from the perspectives of various stakeholders regarding the reuse of routinely collected Electronic Health Record (EHR) data for research.

The session focused on among others identifying possible actors involved in reuse of EHR data for research:

• patients who may directly benefit from insights gained via EHR data analyses,
• healthcare providers who register data in EHR systems,
• researchers who want to reuse EHR data for research to close knowledge gaps,
• EHR vendors who make EHR systems
• privacy officers who make procedures about EHR data reuse
• gata stewards who help in EHR data extractions and pre-processing
• the government who issues laws that impact EHR data reuse.

Potential positive and negative effects of reusing EHR data for research on pharmacotherapy outcomes were discussed, the underlying core values of various actors: ‘quality of life,’ ‘autonomy,’ ‘trust,’ ‘privacy,’ ‘quality of care,’ and ‘solidarity’ and options for action. What to read more? Download the full report (in Dutch) of the session under publications.

15-11-2023

Meet our partner Castor in this short interview!

Castor drives faster, smarter medical research. We strive to improve the clinical trial experience for patients, sites and sponsors, using technology to accelerate every step of the clinical trial journey.

Why does Castor contribute to LEAPfROG?

Over the last few years we have played an active role in the adoption of the FAIR Data Principles in our platform by implementing a FAIR Data Point and have created user-friendly technology for the semantic modeling of research data sets. In addition, we have also played an active role in driving the adoption of FHIR for research purposes. For this reason, we are excited to contribute to this NWO Key Technologies funded project.

What is the role of Castor in LEAPfROG?

We believe that the LEAPfROG project can greatly benefit from our software and knowledge, and that we can learn from the project to improve our product suite and ultimately deliver better software to our customers.

30-06-2023

During the 2nd user committee meeting, the first steps of LEAPfROG were presented and discussed. This steps included assessment of data quality, creating a list of kidney problems due to drugs, knowledge graphs (soon more about this topic), and information needs of physicians. Jurjen van der Schans gave a presentation on PITTS. PITTS is a partner of the LEAPfROG project and offers a web application for living systematic reviews en meta-analysis. The system supports researchers in undertaking the reviews. You can find more information on the website: Living systematic review software | Pitts. In total, 31 participants were present during the user committee meeting. It was very interesting and inspiring and we will use the insights to create the learning medication safety system of LEAPfROG.

23-03-2023

Joris, Daniel en Romy started their PhD trajectory! They will contribute to LEAPfROG work packages 1, 2, 3 and 4. Today, they presented their PhD plans during the yearly PhD day of the department medical informatics of Amsterdam UMC.

12-01-2023

The LEAPfROG kick-off meeting was very informative. Many different professionals were present, including: doctors, patients, pharmacists, companies, regulatory institutions and researchers. We will include the advice in our plans to increase the possibilities for success of LEAPfROG in creating a real and sustainable impact.

01-11-2022

Our research project LEAPfROG officially started!