TI Blog Update: June 2024

TI Blog Update: June 2024

The most significant news by far here at the TI this month was the opening of registration for the 2024 Annual Course: Bringing Best Evidence to Clinicians. To mark the 30th anniversary of the Therapeutics Initiative, we’re excited to introduce a unique format for this year’s event, with an in-person gathering on Friday, October 18, followed by hybrid (virtual and in-person) sessions on Saturday, October 19. Hosted at UBC Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, this central location offers convenient access to nearby popular attractions, making it an ideal location for attendees and family members to explore the city’s offerings outside of conference hours. Keynote presentations will be delivered by internationally renowned experts, Dr. Derelie (aka Dee) Mangin (Professor, McMaster University) and Dr. John Mandrola (Cardiac Electrophysiologist, Baptist Health). In addition, a diverse lineup of both new and veteran faculty members from the Therapeutics Initiative will present on various relevant topics. Furthermore,  this year’s event offers a variety of social activities, including an evening reception at the Glowbal at Telus Garden and a guided gallery tour for family members at the Vancouver Art Gallery, both conveniently located just minutes away from the conference venue. ‘Early bird‘ registration runs until September 4 and we are also running a Portrait Online promotion that offers a 30% discount from the course registration fee to BC family physicians and nurse practitioners who sign up for Portrait Online between June 26 and September 4.  Read more about this year’s course or REGISTER.


Last year we launched a new webiillustrationnar series to tackle the clinical problem of polypharmacy and this month we hosted the seventh Deprescribing Webinar in this series, which was held on Wednesday, June 12. In this webinar, we featured 2 cases where deprescribing seemed in order, one of them demonstrating the “hyperbolic tapering” approach described last month in an erudite TI Best Evidence Webinar by British psychiatrist Mark Horowitz. The recording of Dr. Horowitz’s webinar is freely available on our website and in our YouTube channel.

The seven deprescribing webinars held to date attracted over 2,000 participants from all 6 inhabited continents and a surprising range of countries. The audience usually includes pharmacists, physicians, nurse practitioners and nurses, health educators and regulators, as well as lay people. Previous attendees in this series have found the Deprescribing Webinars both provocative and inspiring. We aim to encourage self-assessment of our own approaches, not only in clinical practice but in how we try to teach cautious and rational prescribing and deprescribing of medications. All webinars are free of charge, and accredited in Canada for Continuing Professional Development. Save the date: the next deprescribing webinar will be held on September 18.

Links to the previous sessions in the Deprescribing Webinar series (links include the slide decks and video recording for each session):


Therapeutics Initiative logoThe TI Methods Speaker Series Webinar continued on Wednesday, June 26th with an insightful presentation by Jennifer Petkovic, Affiliate Investigator at the Bruyere Research Institute and Coordinator of the Campbell and Cochrane Health Equity Thematic Group and the MuSE Consortium, who presented about equity in evidence synthesis. The webinar was recorded and the recording will be posted on the webinar web page.

The next webinar in this series is scheduled for Wednesday, July 31st at 12:00pm PDT [convert to your local time] when Dr. Caspar J. Van Lissa, Associate Professor at Tilburg University (Netherlands), will discuss pioneering work on Text Mining Systematic Reviews (TMSR) by presenting two studies that used different TMSR pipelines to extract a latent nomological network from the literature in a particular subfield, and will reflect on general considerations regarding the use of text mining in research synthesis, based on his experience as Associate Editor of Research Synthesis Methods. Read more about this webinar or REGISTER.

The TI Methods Speaker Series are offered monthly free of charge and everyone is welcome. The event is usually held at noon on the last Wednesday of each month via Zoom. The presentations are recorded and the video recordings are posted online. Click here to view the list of talks offered in 2024.


If you are a BC family physician or nurse practitioner, we invite you to join over 1,000 of your BC colleagues who have signed up for the TI Portrait program at our secure online portal: https://secure.ti.ubc.ca/ Log in to view your Portraits and/or related materials, or sign up if you haven’t already. New Portrait Online users who sign up for this service between June 26 and September 4 will receive a 30% discount on registration for the 2024 Annual Course: Bringing Best Evidence to Clinicians.

Questions? Email the TI Portrait team at portrait@ti.ubc.ca We welcome your feedback.


We wish everyone in the northern hemisphere a great summer and hope to “see you” soon by Zoom, or in person this fall.

Thomas L. Perry MD, FRCPC
Editor, Therapeutics Letter
Therapeutics Initiative
University of British Columbia, Vancouver

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