Medicines in pregnancy: predicting harms and benefits of antenatal corticosteroids

Half of pregnant women are prescribed medicines, but the safety and long-term effects of many of these treatments remain unknown.

I will use new ways to get information about prescriptions that are given during pregnancy using computers to 'read' records and pull out data from Scottish electronic health records. I will then link this information to child health records. I will also ask international researchers to send me their data from birth registries and research studies. I’ll use the resulting ‘big data’ from 1.5 million women to study how medicines might lead to stillbirth or faulty brain development in their children. I’ll also look for ways to predict which women and babies are more likely to have complications and how we can minimise this.

The results of my study will be used to improve the way medications are prescribed in pregnancy to help reduce the risk of stillbirth or impaired brain development.