What Is The Role Of Pharmacovigilance In Pharmaceutical Research And Development?

Pharmaceutical firms have an important role to collect data for pharmacovigilance purposes for all the drugs they are responsible for. There are many ways of collecting this data, and the advent of easier communication methods makes this much easier as well. It is important to understand the role of pharmacovigilance in order to ensure that it’s done correctly.

Pharmacovigilance provides the pharmaceutical firm with the information they need to monitor the safety of the drugs they develop. Though clinical trials may provide a lot of information regarding this, pharmacovigilance is more of a long-term method of data collection and involves a large number of people as well. This makes it easier to understand if the drug has different effects on people based on certain physiological factors such as concurrent illnesses.

Pharmacovigilance also provides an early warning system for the pharmaceutical firm. If a drug turns out to have toxic effects that were not detected during the clinical trials, they can be detected when doing pharmacovigilance. In case the effects are serious, the firm can then pull the drug from the market before a large number of people are harmed, which can result in class action lawsuits that may cost the firm a lot of money.

In many parts of the world, pharmacovigilance is also a legal requirement for firms that produce and market drugs. In such cases, not doing this could result in revocation of permission to manufacture and market the drugs, or could lead to boycotts of the drugs as well. Legal action may also be taken against the firm if this is not followed.