The Importance of Pharmacovigilance


Book Description

The purpose of this document is to present the case for the importance of pharmacovigilance, to record its growth and potential as a significant discipline within medical science, and to describe its impact on patient welfare and public health.




Drug Safety in Developing Countries


Book Description

Drug Safety in Developing Countries: Achievements and Challenges provides comprehensive information on drug safety issues in developing countries. Drug safety practice in developing countries varies substantially from country to country. This can lead to a rise in adverse reactions and a lack of reporting can exasperate the situation and lead to negative medical outcomes. This book documents the history and development of drug safety systems, pharmacovigilance centers and activities in developing countries, describing their current situation and achievements of drug safety practice. Further, using extensive case studies, the book addresses the challenges of drug safety in developing countries. - Provides a single resource for educators, professionals, researchers, policymakers, organizations and other readers with comprehensive information and a guide on drug safety related issues - Describes current achievements of drug safety practice in developing countries - Addresses the challenges of drug safety in developing countries - Provides recommendations, including practical ways to implement strategies and overcome challenges surrounding drug safety




Post-Authorization Safety Studies of Medicinal Products


Book Description

Post-Authorization Safety Studies of Medicinal Products: The PASS Book bridges the gap in the literature by providing a complete look at post-authorization safety studies and important pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance aspects. It covers various types and limitations of active surveillance programs, including the use of large databases and disparate data sources for rapid signal detection, as well as novel and advanced design and analysis approaches for causal interference from observational data. This book serves as an important reference for pharmacovigilance scientists and pharmacoepidemiologists who are searching for the appropriate study design to answer safety research questions. Readers will be able to effectively and efficiently design and interpret findings from post-authorization safety studies with the goal of improving the benefit-risk balance of a drug in order to optimize patient safety. - Discusses all types of observational studies in post-marketing drug safety assessment, from spontaneous reporting systems, to pragmatic trials, with examples from real-world settings - Presents various types of post-authorization safety studies - Offers solutions to the common challenges in the design and conduct of these studies - Highlights active surveillance programs, including common data models for rapid signal detection of drug safety issues




An Introduction to Pharmacovigilance


Book Description

Pharmacovigilance is the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other drug-related problems. This introductory guide is designed to aid the rapid understanding of the key principles of pharmacovigilance. Packed full of examples illustrating drug safety issues it not only covers the processes involved, but the regulatory aspects and ethical and societal considerations of pharmacovigilance. Covering the basics step-by-step, this book is perfect for beginners and is essential reading for those new to drug safety departments and pharmaceutical medicine students. The second edition is thoroughly revised and updated throughout and includes a new chapter on clinical aspects of pharmacovigilance.




Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes


Book Description

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.




Biologics, Biosimilars, and Biobetters


Book Description

A comprehensive primer and reference, this book provides pharmacists and health practitioners the relevant science and policy concepts behind biologics, biosimilars, and biobetters from a practical and clinical perspective. Explains what pharmacists need to discuss the equivalence, efficacy, safety, and risks of biosimilars with physicians, health practitioners, and patients about Guides regulators on pragmatic approaches to dealing with these drugs in the context of rapidly evolving scientific and clinical evidence Balances scientific information on complex drugs with practical information, such as a checklist for pharmacists




WHO Guidelines on Safety Monitoring of Herbal Medicines in Pharmacovigilance Systems


Book Description

Safety is a fundamental principle in the privision of herbal medicines and herbal products for health care and a critical component of quality control. These guidelines provide practical technical guidance for monitoring the safety of herbal medicines with pharmacovigilance systems.




Current Challenges in Pharmacovigilance


Book Description

In spite of recent progress in the harmonization of terminology and processes affecting work on the clinical safety of medicines consensus is needed on standards for many difficult aspects of day-to-day pharmacovigilance that continue to pose problems for both the pharmaceutical industry and drug regulators. The CIOMS V Working Group has generated proposals for pragmatic approaches to dealing with such issues as: classification and handling of individual safety case reports from a variety of sources (spontaneous consumer reports solicited reports literature the Internet observational studies and secondary data bases disease and other registries regulatory ADR databases and licensor-licensee interactions); new approaches to case management and regulatory reporting practices (proper clinical evaluation of cases incidental vs other events patient and reporter identifiability seriousness criteria expectedness criteria case follow-up criteria and the role and structure of case narratives); improvements and efficiencies in the format content and reporting of periodic safety update reports (PSURs) (including results of an industry survey on PSUR workloads and practices; proposals for high case volume and long time-period reports simplification of certain PSURs summary bridging reports addendum reports license renewal reports for EU and Japan dealing with old products and other technical details); determination and use of population exposure (denominator) data (sources of data and a guide to analytical approaches for a variety of circumstances).The Group has also taken stock of the current state of expedited and periodic clinical safety reporting requirements around the world with summary data on regulations from more than 60 countries. Recommendations are made for enhancing the harmonization steps already taken as a result of previous CIOMS publications and the ICH process. In addition to dealing with unfinished and unresolved issues from previous CIOMS initiatives the report covers many emerging topics such as those involving new technologies. Its 20 Appendices provide a wealth of detailed explanations and reference information. It is the most comprehensive and recent treatment of difficult pharmacovigilance issues affecting the working practices and systems of drug safety and other pharmaceutical professionals.




Evidence-Based Pharmacovigilance


Book Description

This book examines insights into the latest thinking and core concepts in areas of key methodological endeavor in Pharmacovigilance (PV), which strives to ever more effectively protect patients from harm caused by the medicines they need. Each book chapter tends to have a clear quantitative or clinical slant and an aim to provide an overview of methodological insights within a specific topic, while also providing a perspective on how the area is anticipated to develop in the future. Quantitative chapters focus more on statistical and epidemiological strategies and the thinking that underpins core developments in Pharmacovigilance, whereas clinical chapters focus on clinical methods for detecting hypotheses for and determining side effects of medicinal products as well as misdiagnosis pitfalls. Examples of areas of importance include signal detection, risk management, and risk benefit assessment. Vital and authoritative, Evidence-Based Pharmacovigilance: Clinical and Quantitative Aspects aims to provide readers with a sense of the advances that have occurred in pharmacovigilance methods and approaches, as well as inspiration and motivation to advance the field of pharmacovigilance with a strong sense that there is much more work to be done in ensuring the safe use of medications by patients.




Communicating about Risks and Safe Use of Medicines


Book Description

At the core of this book lies the question how to approach medicines, risks and communication as a researcher - or anybody planning and evaluating a communication intervention, or wanting to understand communication events in private and the media. With a view to tackle current shortcomings of communication systems and processes for improved implementation, patient satisfaction and health outcomes, a multilayered approach is presented. This combines multiple data types and methods to obtain a wider and deeper understanding of the major parties and their interactions, as well as the healthcare, social and political contexts of information flows, how they interfere and which impact they have. Illustrated with real life experiences of safety concerns with medicines, worldwide active experts discuss the methods and contributions their disciplines can offer. With considerations on terminologies, tabulated overviews on communication types and outcomes, a patient-centred vision and plain language for non-medical readers, the book creates a platform for multidisciplinary collaborations amongst researchers as well as practitioners from communications, healthcare, the social sciences and pharmacovigilance. Importantly, it advocates for an active role of patients and highlights the achievements and aspirations of patient organisations. Finally, the book suggests establishing an inclusive discipline of humanities and epidemiology of medicinal product risk communication to realise full research potential. The authors are driven by the curiosity for communication as the most human behaviour, and as good health is amongst the basic human needs, medicinal product risk communication is an exciting research field of high global relevance.