title: Social Media Listening for Routine Post-Marketing Safety Surveillance.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Post-marketing safety surveillance primarily relies on data from spontaneous adverse event reports, medical literature, and observational databases. Limitations of these data sources include potential under-reporting, lack of geographic diversity, and time lag between event occurrence and discovery. There is growing interest in exploring the use of social media ('social listening') to supplement established approaches for pharmacovigilance. Although social listening is commonly used for commercial purposes, there are only anecdotal reports of its use in pharmacovigilance. Health information posted online by patients is often publicly available, representing an untapped source of post-marketing safety data that could supplement data from existing sources.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The objective of this paper is to describe one methodology that could help unlock the potential of social media for safety surveillance.
  
  
  METHODS
  A third-party vendor acquired 24 months of publicly available Facebook and Twitter data, then processed the data by standardizing drug names and vernacular symptoms, removing duplicates and noise, masking personally identifiable information, and adding supplemental data to facilitate the review process. The resulting dataset was analyzed for safety and benefit information.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In Twitter, a total of 6,441,679 Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA(®)) Preferred Terms (PTs) representing 702 individual PTs were discussed in the same post as a drug compared with 15,650,108 total PTs representing 946 individual PTs in Facebook. Further analysis revealed that 26 % of posts also contained benefit information.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Social media listening is an important tool to augment post-marketing safety surveillance. Much work remains to determine best practices for using this rapidly evolving data source.
authors.affiliation: GlaxoSmithKline, 5 Moore Dr., Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, USA. gregory.e.powell@gsk.com.
authors.forename: Gregory E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Powell
authors.affiliation: GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines, King of Prussia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Harry A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Seifert
authors.affiliation: GlaxoSmithKline, Stockley Park, UK.
authors.forename: Tjark
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Reblin
authors.affiliation: GlaxoSmithKline, King of Prussia, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Phil J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Burstein
authors.affiliation: GlaxoSmithKline, 5 Moore Dr., Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, USA.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Blowers
authors.affiliation: GlaxoSmithKline, 5 Moore Dr., Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, USA.
authors.forename: J Alan
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Menius
authors.affiliation: GlaxoSmithKline, 5 Moore Dr., Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, USA.
authors.forename: Jeffery L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Painter
authors.affiliation: Blue Zone Industries, Chester Springs, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Epidemico Inc., Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Carrie E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Pierce
authors.affiliation: Epidemico Inc., Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Harold W
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Rodriguez
authors.affiliation: Epidemico Inc., Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: John S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Brownstein
authors.affiliation: Epidemico Inc., Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Clark C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Freifeld
authors.affiliation: Zero Chaos, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Heidi G
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Bell
authors.affiliation: Epidemico Inc., Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Nabarun
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dasgupta
mesh_terms: D016907:Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D060735:Pharmacovigilance; D011358:Product Surveillance, Postmarketing / Q000379:methods*; D058028:Research Report; D012449:Safety; D061108:Social Media