DRUG_ERA

Table Description

A Drug Era is defined as a span of time when the Person is assumed to be exposed to a particular active ingredient. A Drug Era is not the same as a Drug Exposure: Exposures are individual records corresponding to the source when Drug was delivered to the Person, while successive periods of Drug Exposures are combined under certain rules to produce continuous Drug Eras.

ETL Conventions

The SQL script for generating DRUG_ERA records can be found here.

CDM Field	User Guide	ETL Conventions	Datatype	Required	Primary Key	Foreign Key	FK Table	FK Domain
drug_era_id			integer	Yes	Yes	No
person_id			integer	Yes	No	Yes	PERSON
drug_concept_id	The Concept Id representing the specific drug ingredient.		integer	Yes	No	Yes	CONCEPT	Drug
drug_era_start_date		The Drug Era Start Date is the start date of the first Drug Exposure for a given ingredient, with at least 31 days since the previous exposure.	date	Yes	No	No
drug_era_end_date		The Drug Era End Date is the end date of the last Drug Exposure. The End Date of each Drug Exposure is either taken from the field drug_exposure_end_date or, as it is typically not available, inferred using the following rules: For pharmacy prescription data, the date when the drug was dispensed plus the number of days of supply are used to extrapolate the End Date for the Drug Exposure. Depending on the country-specific healthcare system, this supply information is either explicitly provided in the day_supply field or inferred from package size or similar information. For Procedure Drugs, usually the drug is administered on a single date (i.e., the administration date). A standard Persistence Window of 30 days (gap, slack) is permitted between two subsequent such extrapolated DRUG_EXPOSURE records to be considered to be merged into a single Drug Era.	date	Yes	No	No
drug_exposure_count			integer	No	No	No
gap_days		The Gap Days determine how many total drug-free days are observed between all Drug Exposure events that contribute to a DRUG_ERA record. It is assumed that the drugs are “not stockpiled” by the patient, i.e. that if a new drug prescription or refill is observed (a new DRUG_EXPOSURE record is written), the remaining supply from the previous events is abandoned. The difference between Persistence Window and Gap Days is that the former is the maximum drug-free time allowed between two subsequent DRUG_EXPOSURE records, while the latter is the sum of actual drug-free days for the given Drug Era under the above assumption of non-stockpiling.	integer	No	No	No