A new article in the DIA's Therapeutic Innovation and Regulatory Science journal discusses the pitfalls and potential for the FDA's openFDA program.
This past June, the FDA launched openFDA, a new initiative designed to make it easier for web developers, researchers, and the public to access large, important public health datasets collected by the agency.
The crowd-sourcing of adverse event data may or may not yield interesting results, but it’s a good place to start. It represents an opportunity for the agency to begin designing a more evolved approach to 21st-century pharmacovigilance.
To borrow a term from the nuclear disarmament discussion, 21st-century pharmacovigilance must work with its various colleagues to ‘‘trust, but verify.’’ Again, this fits hand-in-glove with the spirit of openFDA.
Access to data is important—but 21st-century pharmacovigilance must also take into consideration the realities of funding, existing staff levels and training programs, and existing regulatory authority. Perhaps creative public use of FDA data via openFDA will help develop not only new solutions but also awareness of the magnitude of the task at hand.
The full open FDA: An Open Question article can be found here.
