The government’s medicines safety agency has implemented new software to improve management of adverse drug reaction (ADR) data reported by GPs and patients and to flag up and prioritise potential medicine safety issues.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) began last week to use new software from Lincoln Technologies to analyse data from the Yellow Card drug reaction reporting scheme.
The WebVDME Pharmacovigilance Signal Detection and Signal Management Software enables the agency to improve its ability to examine medicines within classes, medicines across classes and multiple medicines in combination that may be associated with a particular adverse reaction.
The MRHA says key benefits of the software include a new method of detecting drug/drug interactions, earlier signaling of potential problems, an improved focus on reactions in children and an improved focus on reactions to drugs during pregnancy.
Dr June Raine, director of post licensing at the MHRA said, "This innovative technology will provide valuable new tools for improving the safe use of marketed medicines. It will help us continue to strengthen processes for identifying possible risks to public health more quickly and efficiently and will keep us at the forefront of signal detection."
Lincoln Technologies, which was awarded the contract to supply the software earlier last year, is a US-based company which supplies pharmacovigilance products to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Last year the Department of Health revamped the Yellow Card reporting scheme so that patients could submit reports as well as clinicians and also made the ADR data available online.
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