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MEDSTOPPER

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Starting medications is like the bliss of marriage and stopping them is like the agony of divorce. - Doug Danforth

Meet the Team


A number of Canada's experts in evidence-based medicine and prescribing in the elderly have collaborated to create Medstopper, a web-based tool designed to help prescribers and patients make decisions around polypharmacy by providing an approach to thinking about whether or not to reduce or stop medications. This tool is funded by a Knowledge Translation grant from the Canadian Institute of Health Information and is administered through the University of British Columbia.

James McCormack

James McCormack is a Professor in the faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He has had extensive experience, both locally and internationally, talking to health professionals and consumers about the rational use of medication. James has presented hundreds of seminars on drug therapy over the last 25 years, focusing on shared-informed decision-making using evidence based information and rational therapeutic principles. Medstopper was his original idea and he helped recruit the team that has shaped and refined its content and operations.

Dee Mangin

In 2013 Dee Mangin came to Canada from New Zealand where she was the Director of the Primary Care Unit at the University of Otago, Christchurch as well as a Clinical Advisory Board member and Clinical Leader for Research Audit and Evaluation at the Pegasus Health Primary Healthcare Organization. Dee has a deep professional interest in rational prescribing, innovative models of primary care delivery, and the influences of science, policy and commerce on the nature of care. She has specific experience in interventional studies including in "deprescribing" trials of the reduction of multiple medicines in older adults in older age.

Barb Farrell

Barb Farrell is a doctor of pharmacy and an Assistant Professor with the Department of Family Medicine, University of Ottawa and Adjunct Assistant Professor with the School of Pharmacy, University of Waterloo. Barb works as a scientist for the Bruyere Research Institute and the CT Lamont Primary Health Care Research Centre in Ottawa and works on numerous projects to develop and implement guidelines to reduce and discontinue drug use in the elderly. She specializes in innovative models to improve medication-related care for the elderly.

John Sloan

John Sloan is a Clinical Professor with the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, a specialist in the care of the elderly and an author. For nearly 30 years he has carried out a unique primary care practice visiting mostly frail elderly patients in their own homes. He has inspired numerous followers through lectures and presentations on what he has learned about treating elderly patients as well as his with his 2009 book, "A Bitter Pill: How the Medical System is Failing the Elderly".

Johanna Trimble

Johanna Trimble is a consumer advocate who has had close and personal experiences with navigating medications and care of the elderly LINK. Johanna has worked with the BC Patient Safety and Quality Council, and is a member of the BC Patient Voices Network. She is a Patients for Patient Safety (Canada) Champion and sits on a number of provincial and national committees aiming to tackle the problems of polypharmacy in the elderly, including the BC Polypharmacy Risk Reduction Initiative. She is an honorary lecturer in Community Geriatrics at the UBC Department of Family Practice, Faculty of Medicine.

Mike Allan

Mike Allan has been in family practice for approximately 15 years and presently works at the Northeast Community Health Centre in Edmonton. He has published and presented widely on evidence-based medicine and co-produces (with James McCormack) one of North America's most popular medical podcasts. As the director of the Alberta College of Family Physicians Evidence and CPD Program, he works with a team that tirelessly works to make medical care, especially around medications, more rational and evidence-based.

Rita McCracken

Rita McCracken is the Associate Head, Providence Health Care and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Practice in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. Her practice and research interests are in family medicine and nursing home care. Rita is an expert in polypharmacy, de-prescribing, dementia and end of life care for elderly patients.

Keith White

Keith White is the physician lead for the Polypharmacy Risk Reduction initiative, which is part of the Shared Care Committee is a joint collaborative committee of Doctors of BC and the Ministry of Health. As a family physician working in rural areas in Canada for over 30 years, Keith has a strong interest in helping family and specialist physicians to improve the management of elderly patients on multiple medications, especially the frail elderly. The initiative hopes to improve their quality of life and decrease hospital admissions through quality improvement measures such as, de-prescribing unnecessary medications and preventing adverse drug reactions. He sits on the BC Patient Safety and Quality Council and has participated in numerous initiatives to review, monitor and improve prescribing.

Robert Rangno

Dr. Robert Rangno is an Emeritus Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics and Medicine. Bob was the head of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at St. Paul's Hospital and Associate Professor, Departments of Medicine and Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia. He has been involved in therapeutic education and has promoted the concepts of low doses and deprescribing for 30 years.