Building the Infrastructure for Medical Cannabis Clinical Care and Research
The International Society of Cannabis Pharmacists (ISCPh) supports and advances research aimed at improving how cannabis and cannabinoid therapies are documented, assessed, managed, and studied in clinical practice.
Our research initiatives and collaborations address foundational gaps in medical cannabis clinical care and research. These initiatives focus on characterizing cannabinoid exposure, evaluating treatment experiences, documenting clinical interventions, and measuring outcomes across practice settings.
DOCUMENT → ASSESS → INTERVENE → MEASURE
Together, these initiatives create a pathway from standardized clinical documentation to meaningful real-world research.
Research Initiatives
DOCUMENT
Medical Cannabis Medication History
Cannabis and cannabinoid use may be documented without sufficient information to characterize a patient’s actual exposure. Important details such as product, cannabinoid composition, dose or amount used, formulation, route, frequency, timing, and indication may be missing or inconsistently recorded.
ISCPh has developed a proposed framework for incorporating medical cannabis and cannabinoid products into the medication history. The framework includes standardized data elements for characterizing cannabinoid exposure and a structured process for collecting, clarifying, verifying when feasible, reconciling, and documenting this information.
Current stage: Framework developed
Next phase: Feasibility and evaluation across clinical settings
ASSESS
Cannabinoid Evaluation and Recommendation System (CbERS)
The Cannabinoid Evaluation and Recommendation System (CbERS), developed by Melani Kane, PharmD, is a structured clinical framework designed to characterize patient experiences with cannabinoid therapy and guide potential treatment modifications.
CbERS distinguishes persistent symptoms from cannabinoid-related adverse effects and organizes potential interventions across three domains: dose or cannabinoid ratio, timing or frequency, and formulation or route of administration.
Current stage: Framework development
Next phase: Expert consensus, reliability testing, and prospective validation
Development: Melani Kane, PharmD, with research collaboration through ISCPh
INTERVENE
CANN-PIC
Clinical Interventions Performed by Pharmacists in Medical Cannabis Care
CANN-PIC is an ISCPh research initiative developing standardized terminology for documenting pharmacist interventions related to medical cannabis and cannabinoid therapy.
The taxonomy supports consistent documentation of interventions involving treatment effectiveness, cannabinoid safety, formulation and administration, conventional medications, and care coordination across different pharmacist practice models and clinical settings.
Standardized terminology may enable pharmacist interventions to be more consistently documented, compared, and studied across sites.
Current stage: Taxonomy development
Next phase: Prospective multicenter pilot
MEASURE
CANN-OPT
CANN-OPT is an emerging clinical research initiative focused on medication optimization among older adults using cannabinoid-based therapies.
The project is will examine whether cannabinoid-based therapies can be incorporated into medication-optimization strategies for older adults with chronic pain and polypharmacy while evaluating outcomes such as changes in high-risk medication use, symptom control, tolerability, and other clinically meaningful outcomes.
Current stage: Pilot development
Next phase: Clinical research collaboration
A Connected Research Program
These initiatives address different parts of the same clinical and research challenge.
DOCUMENT | Medical Cannabis Medication History
Establishes how cannabinoid exposure is characterized and documented.
ASSESS | CbERS
Provides a structured approach for evaluating the patient’s treatment experience and identifying potential treatment modifications.
INTERVENE | CANN-PIC
Standardizes how pharmacist interventions in medical cannabis care are classified and documented.
MEASURE | CANN-OPT
Applies this developing infrastructure to the study of medication-related and clinical outcomes.
The goal is to create infrastructure that can support both clinical practice and increasingly rigorous multicenter research.
Collaborate With Us
ISCPh welcomes collaboration with researchers, pharmacists, clinicians, healthcare systems, academic institutions, medical cannabis programs, and other organizations interested in advancing cannabinoid-related clinical research.
Opportunities for collaboration may include multicenter research participation, clinical implementation and feasibility testing, expert review and consensus development, reliability and validation studies, research methodology and statistical collaboration, health informatics and electronic health record integration, and development of future clinical research projects.
Interested in collaborating?
Whether you are interested in a specific initiative or in broader research collaboration with ISCPh, we would like to hear from you.