These are exciting times for the science of pharmacovigilance. The theme of the conference will be to capture innovations that are occurring in many domains, and focus on how they can bring about benefits for patients.
Spontaneous reporting systems remain the cornerstone of pharmacovigilance, however innovations are occurring in many domains to improve reporting including patient reports, and the development of apps as well as a growth in the use of social media and social networks.
These innovations allow further opportunities to capture drug safety information in real-time directly from patients – this will lead to many challenges for healthcare professionals, industry and regulators, and will need to be accompanied by the development of analytical platforms for big data, including innovative data mining algorithms, underpinned by developments in regulation.