What is pharmacovigilance and its aims?
The World Health Organization defines pharmacovigilance (PV) as “the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other drug-related problem.” The goals of PV are to bolster patient safety concerning medicine use by providing a system to collect, assess, and distribute drug safety data. PV activities involve monitoring approved drugs and investigational medicinal products (IMPs) to:
Identify previously unknown adverse effects
Recognize changes in the frequency or severity of known adverse effects
Assess a drugs risk/benefit to determine if action is required to improve safety
Ensure the accuracy of information communicated to healthcare professionals and patients, and to ensure information contained in patient information leaflets (PILs) is up to date.
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