title: Social media and pharmacovigilance: A review of the opportunities and challenges.
abstract: Adverse drug reactions come at a considerable cost on society. Social media are a potentially invaluable reservoir of information for pharmacovigilance, yet their true value remains to be fully understood. In order to realize the benefits social media holds, a number of technical, regulatory and ethical challenges remain to be addressed. We outline these key challenges identifying relevant current research and present possible solutions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Liverpool, L69 3GJ, UK.|Department of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Liverpool, L69 3GL, UK.|Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sloane
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Liverpool, L69 3GL, UK.|Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital NHS Trust, Liverpool, L7 8XP, UK.
authors.forename: Orod
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Osanlou
authors.affiliation: Drug Safety & Epidemiology, Novartis Pharma AG, Postfach, CH-4002, Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lewis
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK.
authors.forename: Danushka
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bollegala
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Liverpool, L69 3GJ, UK.|Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Maskell
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Liverpool, L69 3GL, UK.|Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital NHS Trust, Liverpool, L7 8XP, UK.
authors.forename: Munir
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pirmohamed
mesh_terms: D057225:Data Mining; D004345:Drug Industry; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D060735:Pharmacovigilance; D061108:Social Media / Q000941:ethics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
keywords: adverse drug reactions; pharmacovigilance; signal generation; social media