Social Media for Pharmacovigilance

Utility of social media and crowd-sourced data for pharmacovigilance

Tricco AC, Zarin W, Lillie E, Pham B, Straus SE. Utility of social media and crowd-sourced data for pharmacovigilance: a scoping review protocol. BMJ Open. 2017;7(1):e013474. DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-013474.

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Bottom Line:

• Results suggest that the use of social media data for pharmacovigilance is in its infancy
• Social media has the potential to supplement data from regulatory agency databases; capturing less frequently reported adverse events and identifying adverse events earlier than official alerts or labeling revision time, however, the utility and validity of the data sources remain under-studied

Impact:

• Conducted for Health Canada to provide information on the validity and reliability of using social media data for pharmacovigilance to inform conceptualization of a potential social media listening platform for drug-safety surveillance in Canada

Protocol:

• Protocol publication
• Open Science Framework registration

Additional Resources:

• Research brief
• Full publication

Funding:

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) through the Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network (DSEN)