Page 98 - Research & Innovation Report 2020

HEALTH SCIENCES

From a small seed to an

international network

“This is about how a small seed can grow into a large network to ensure medicine and treatment
are optimally and cost-effectively managed for each and every patient.” – Distinguished
Professor Ilse Truter

Pharmacy professor Ilse Truter’s many years of exceptional work Sciences and received the Faculty of Health Sciences’ Researcher
were rewarded in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 she was inducted as of the Year Award in 2020. In 2021 she was made a Distinguished
a Fellow of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology Professor in Pharmacy.
(ISPE). This is the largest, most distinguished society of clinicians
and researchers in the world, and in terms of her research The leader of the Drug Utilisation Research Unit (DURU) and an
credentials it’s the apex recognition. expert member of the WHO International Working Group on Drug
Statistics Methodology, Prof Truter describes “how a small seed
At the same time she was appointed as an Associate Editor (Asia- planted in 1994 to start DURU and the research linked to it at our
Africa-Middle East Region) of the journal Pharmacoepidemiology University, has gained international recognition”.
and Drug Safety (the journal of the ISPE), which is the most
influential journal in this research field. Drug utilisation research, she explains, “was introduced to
academia in South Africa by Professor Ian Wiseman – head of the
Also in 2020, she was appointed as the Director of the School Department of Pharmacy at the University of Port Elizabeth, now
of Clinical Care and Medicinal Sciences in the Faculty of Health Nelson Mandela University. It is an amazing research field, ranging

Prof Ilse Truter

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