In this Challenge, you are asked to design a drug dose schedule.

Suppose you need to ensure that your patient maintains a blood concentration of at least 0.2 μg/ml. The drug is administered in time-release capsule form such that, each hour, 20% of the remaining drug is released. The drug is cleared by the patient’s liver at a rate of 30% per hour. Severe liver damage can ensue if the concentration ever exceeds 0.3 μg/ml. Assume that your patient has a blood volume of 5 l. Find a dose size and schedule that meets the requirements with the lowest possible dose frequency.

Specific instructions

  1. Write codes to numerically solve the problem.
  2. Explain your codes carefully. Your intended audience knows nothing about pharmacokinetics.
  3. Upload your write-up to the course canvas site. Include both .Rmd and .pdf files. It may be easiest to generate an .html file first and then use a browser to print to a PDF document.
  4. After you’ve uploaded your write-up, perform peer review of another student’s.

An Rmarkdown template is provided to help you get started.

Important Note: You will turn in each draft of your report via the course Canvas site. Upload both the Rmarkdown document and a PDF version of your report. Choose the filenames according to the following formula: Challenge_X-Y.Z where X is the challenge problem number (here, 2), Y is the draft number (1, 2, or 3), and Z is the appropriate extension (.Rmd or .pdf).