NLM Informatics Lecture Series: Can Social Media Provide Reliable Signals of Adverse Drug Reactions? (NIH Only)

Pre-market testing of drugs produces reasonably high quality information about the efficacy of the drug as a treatment for the condition for which it was approved, but gives a very incomplete picture of the drug’s safety. It is only after a drug is marketed and used on a more widespread basis over longer periods of time that it is possible to identify other effects, such as rare but serious adverse effects, or those that are more common in the special subgroups excluded from the trial, among others. Post-marketing surveillance currently relies on voluntary reporting to the FDA by health care professionals (and recently, patients themselves). Self-reported patient information captures a valuable perspective not captured by other means, and has been found to be of similar quality to that provided by health professionals. However, the value of numerous, informal self-reports such as those found in social network postings has not been evaluated. Through recently awarded NIH/NLM funding, Dr. Gonzalez is deploying the infrastructure needed to explore the value of such postings as a source of “signals” of potential adverse drug reactions soon after the drugs hit the market. Despite the significant challenge of processing colloquial text, her studies showed promising results. Additional evaluation on un-annotated comments revealed encouraging correlations between adverse drug reactions found by her system and the documented reactions for those drugs. An overview of the methods ...
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