Bruce Palsulich, vice president of Product Strategy, Oracle Health Sciences, explains how AI can help pharmaceutical companies gather more important data and boost pharmacovigilance.
AI
Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? That is the question the pharmaceutical industry is currently asking itself. In an effort to bolster pharmacovigilance programmes, drug companies have succeeded in gathering an enviable amount of patient data – so much so that they have found themselves struggling under the weight of it, particularly around adverse event reports.
Aided partly by the digitisation of reporting, partly by the growth of marketing outreach programs, pharmaceutical companies are seeing a 10-20% rise in adverse event reports. And it’s not just the volume of information that’s changing, but also the nature of it. Due to the convenience of logging adverse events via email, or on online forums, there has been an upsurge in patient reporting. But it also means that the information logged is much less detailed. Drug companies could receive a notice that a patient taking a particular medication has felt dizzy and jittery, for example, with no further context provided.