Pharmacovigilance in 2022: trends and demand
Medicines can cause certain unknown side effects that may emerge when they are on the market over a longer period of time. It is vital for pharmaceutical companies and regulators to constantly track such adverse events and report them. This is the fundamental principle behind a process called Pharmacovigilance, according to the WHO ”pharmacovigilance is the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other medicine/vaccine-related problem”. At Iris.ai we have a set of smart, machine learning-based modules all based on machine understanding of scientific text and data, which is essential for Post Market Surveillance Automation.
According to recent reports the global pharmacovigilance market size is expected to reach USD 17.36 billion by 2030 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.5% from 2022 to 2030.
Importance of Pharmacovigilance Post the Pandemic
Covid has provided various challenges as well as opportunities for pharmacovigilance service providers. During Coronavirus lockdowns there was a decline in ongoing clinical trials due to the restricted availability of clinical resources and research staff. The restriction of patients also brought changed work practices, routine audits and safety inspections. Additionally, an increase in the use of drugs (either approved for Covid or off label use) have driven the healthcare industry to work round the clock for safety profiling of the products. To be able to leverage such growth opportunities, the Pharmacovigilance industry is increasingly adapting to new trends attributed to better and more effective data collection and analysis. In this blog post we will share 4 main Pharmacovigilance trends for 2022.
Automation in Pharmacovigilance
There are many areas of pharmacovigilance where automation can help. As our customers have confirmed automating pharmacovigilance has many benefits – it eliminates human error, reduces costs and time. This helps manage large amounts of data and ensure compliance.
With our Iris.ai tools you can automatically find the documents you need by inserting any written text on the topic, such as product and disease descriptions, patents, case reports, clinical trials, etc. You can summarize them and extract all relevant information. Freeing up this time will enable PV professionals to spend time on more valuable-added tasks.
Pharmacovigilance requires basic automation to ensure automatic tracking, task monitoring and data collection. Automation can change the way data is collected and analyzed, which could accelerate clinical trials. Electronic data capture (EDC) is a database used to store patient data during clinical trials. The use of EDC-based tools for data collection and analysis during clinical trials and market observations is efficient. Cloud technology is ideal for providing a fully integrated database for all stakeholders, which is essential for improving drug safety and pharmacovigilance. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) eliminates manual tasks by providing automated data entry, processing and analysis. Combining RPA with cognitive automation through natural language processing can help with decision-making. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help data analysts and data scientists make predictions based on data analysis. This can improve the quality of pharmacovigilance processes.
Scaling Resources
During the pandemic, there was a noticeable raise of Adverse Effects (AEs). To effectively manage this workload, the pharmaceutical industry had to scale their in-house resources and enhance their manpower. There has also been an increase in the manual tasks to be outsourced like data collection and entry. The scaling process has been improvised with adjustment of key performance indicators (KPIs) and dedicated teams, which has led to a greater degree of flexibility.
Dedicated Teams and Remote Work Culture
Building remote stations for a dedicated team of pharmacovigilance experts is a new and effective trend that drove the pharmaceutical industry during a pandemic. Such workplaces are divided according to job categories in order to achieve better coordination and specialization in the processes.
The importance of pharmacovigilance has been renewed and re-emphasized in the face of the global health crisis. Adapting to the new post pandemic trends will definitely increase cost effectiveness and improve the operational efficiency of the pharmacovigilance sector.
Importance of Collaboration
Collaboration and integration is the fourth trend for 2022. To improve, the healthcare industry, including pharmacovigilance, should close the gap between different sections from the medical affairs and safety areas to the clinical development and regulatory affairs space. Thanks to trends in the pharmaceutical industry, teams are more interconnected than ever before. For teams to be successful, they need to work more closely together, data must flow freely, and business processes need to be streamlined. Successfully implemented digital transformation strategies can have a significant impact on medical advances and patients’ lives. Our Iris.ai team is fully dedicated to facilitating our client´s pharmacovigilance processes to increase patient safety and drive innovation.
Key Takeaways
👉 The pandemic caused decline in ongoing clinical trials and a raise of Adverse Effects reported.
👉 Automation of pharmacovigilance process will drive the industry – EDC, RPA and AI are trending.
👉 Pharmacovigilance companies will scale their resources.
👉 Remote work culture is on the raise.
👉 Collaboration between different departments is crucial to improve the pharmacovigilance process.
Sign up to our newsletter for more content about digitizing R&D.
