Anticholinergic medicines are prescribed for various conditions such as urinary incontinence and intestinal spasm and can pose harmful unintended side-effects. The cumulative effect of multiple anticholinergic medicines can lead to adverse outcomes such as delirium or falls.
Anticholinergic medicines represent a potentially reversible contributor to delirium and falls that is often overlooked in practice. We developed and validated an Anticholinergic Medication Index (ACMI) to quantify the association between anticholinergic medicines and the adverse outcome of delirium/falls. We also co-designed a training package for use in primary-care. A crucial next step is to further develop ACMI for use in hospital electronic patient record (EPR) systems as an electronic Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) to automatically identify high-risk patients in hospital and support safer prescribing.