Modern Pharmacovigilance: Emerging Technologies for Drug Safety Monitoring

Abstract

Modern pharmacovigilance has moved beyond traditional spontaneous adverse drug reaction reporting and now uses digital data and advanced technologies to improve drug safety monitoring. Conventional pharmacovigilance remains important, but delayed reporting, incomplete information, under-reporting, and the large amount of safety data can make timely assessment difficult. New technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, electronic health records, real-world data, social media, mobile health applications, wearable devices, and automated safety signal detection are changing how adverse drug reactions are identified and monitored. These technologies can analyze large amounts of data from different sources and may help identify possible safety signals earlier. Artificial intelligence also has the capacity to support important pharmacovigilance activities, including case processing, data classification, signal detection, signal prioritization, and risk assessment. The use of electronic health records, patient registries, social media, mobile applications, and wearable devices can provide additional information about medicine use and patient health outcomes. Combining information from different sources may improve the ability to detect and assess drug-related risks. sometimes, the use of these technologies also presents challenges, like poor data quality, privacy concerns, differences in data formats, bias in algorithms, limited transparency, and regulatory challenges. Human review is important to ensure that technology-based findings are properly assessed and interpreted. This review discusses major emerging technologies in modern pharmacovigilance, their applications, advantages, limitations, and future use in drug safety monitoring. It also emphasizes the importance of human oversight, reliable data, appropriate validation, and suitable regulatory frameworks for the safe and responsible use of technology in pharmacovigilance.