The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has announced a new three year project known as ‘WEB-RADR’ to develop a mobile app for healthcare professionals and the public to report suspected adverse drug reactions (or ADRs) to national EU regulators. The project is launching in response to the increasing use of smartphones, apps, and social media for discussing issues with healthcare according to the MHRA. The project will be funded though the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European pharma lobby group EFPIA (Adams/Pharmafile/9/8/14).
“The growing use of smartphones and tablets by patients and healthcare professionals creates a need for reporting forms to be provided on these platforms to ensure regulators receive ADR reports that are easy to access and complete.Additionally, the recent growth of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and the many specialist sites and blogs has given rise to many people sharing their medical experiences publicly on the internet. Such data sharing, if properly harnessed, could provide an extremely valuable source of information the monitoring the safety of medicines after they have been licensed,” says Mick Foy, group manager in the MHRA’s vigilance and risk management of medicines division.
WEB-RADR will report suspected adverse drug reactions and also serve as a way to send accurate, timely and up to date medicines information to patients, clinicians, and caregivers. The app will also utilize social media data to identify potential drug safety issues. MHRA said that WEB-RADR deliver recommendations for international drug safety monitoring as to how these resources should be used ethically and scientifically.
