title: Why do we need pharmacists in pharmacovigilance systems?
abstract: Pharmacovigilance is the science and activity relating to the collection, detection, assessment, monitoring, and prevention of adverse effects with pharmaceutical products. Pharmacovigilance basically targets safety of medicine. Pharmacists have crucial role in health systems to maintain the rational and safe use of medicine for they are drug experts who are specifically trained in this field. Effective use of pharmacists' workforce will improve the outcome of the pharmacotherapy as well as decrease global health costs. Given their advanced training, pharmacists can utilize pharmacovigilance systems interfaced with electronic health records to monitor the performance of the drugs they fill and also identify adverse drug reactions earlier than non-pharmacists, thereby reducing high healthcare costs.
authors.forename: Hale Z.
authors.initials: HZ
authors.lastname: Toklu
authors.forename: Edward
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mensah
keywords: adverse drug reaction reporting; health system; pharmacist; pharmacotherapy; pharmacovigilance; pharmacy; rational use of medicine