Monitoring prEscriptiondruG Abuse Using DOctor Shopping bEhavior

Prescription drug abuse is a major challenge in public health, in particular in countries such as France, one of the main consumers of medication in Europe. A single source of information is rarely sufficient to measure such a complex phenomenon. This project entitled MEGADOSE (Monitoring prEscriptiondruG Abuse using DOctor Shopping bEhavior) may complete efficiently the available data from the addictovigilance centres allowing the health authorities (French Drug Agency) to answer to the main general questions (What are the main prescription drug abused in France? What are the national trends in prescription drug abuse? What is the impact of a public health measure on prescription drug abuse). This project constitutes the opportunity of "extending" the application of our tool (the DS method) on a French national database with a minimal risk since this method has already been validated and applied on different geographic areas, on different drugs and at different levels of analysis. The project would also be integrated in routinely as a useful tool included in the addictovigilance monitoring, also allowing a multi-approach approach and the monitoring of policy and practice interventions implemented by the French Drug Agency. The project MEGADOSE is also in accordance with the main topic of the projects funded by ANSM related to drug misuse in particular: development and identification of systems and tools able to detect earlier misuse phenomenon; analysis of the impact of communications, guidelines, decisions to health authorities and patients