Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) sees that it would be the mobile devices,  social media and  information technology which would drive the pharmacovigilance in the coming years.

According to Ganesh Parkar, Cluster Head Pharma and Manufacturing, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., the future of pharmacovigilance would be driven by technology.

The reality is that there is a technology enabled solutions which would witness rapid growth and manoeuvre adverse drug monitoring and provide the information in real time, said Parkar in his key note address at the recently concluded DIA two day flagship event on pharmacovigilance.

“There is a paradigm shift in pharmacovigilance and companies engaged in providing technology solutions need to adopt a holistic approach to enable the healthcare providers embark better  and agility with many such  innovative solutions.  When technology is used, there is a clear-cut process in place in recording adverse drug reporting. This begins from Registered Medical Practitioner(RMP) to provide safety surveillance and aggregate reporting,” he said.

During the event of an adverse drug monitoring, the patient is the only focus. Now when mobile devices social media and information technology along with genomics would be adopted it would accelerate a wider customer base.

The use of mobile devices, social media and information technology would enable creation of safety database, pre-clinical data, post marketing intelligence and social media, he said.

“There is need to integrate, inquire, identify, improve and inform to predict a potential adverse drug reaction(ADR) before the actual outcome is declared. There is need for data on biological, chemical and clinical information. There is need to put in place clinical assessment   via statistical evaluation, generate clinical studies based on scientific and clinical evaluation. There is need to identify, toxi-genomics, pharmaco-genomics and post authorization studies, said Parkar.

Further, there is need to adopt advanced analytics which includes pharmaco-epidemiology and signal detection. This would help to improve the risk predictions and risk  management planning. It would enhance the stakeholders communications and regulatory interactions. In fact, this is where one could elevate from data to insight. Now using data analytics, it is possible to link analyses,. It would help faster detection, strengthen and validate safety signals. Besides, it would identify specific patient population at risk, he said.

Therefore, active surveillance would allow emergency medical reporting (EMR). It would help create data base on pharmacy and medical health claims via mobiles, social media and IT, said Parkar.