pharmacovigilance

Pharmacovigilance is generally regarded as a cost centre in a pharmaceutical company, and the management will always be on the lookout for further reducing the costs without compromising compliance. One way to achieve this is through automation. There is a galore of automation opportunities available in patient safety. This can be simple automation or by […]

A pharmaceutical company is any commercial entity that may be associated with research, manufacturing, commercialization or distribution of medicinal products. This entity may or may not own the product license, and this factor may decide if this entity will or will not fall under the purview of pharmacovigilance regulations. That doesn’t prevent the company personnel […]

Working in the pharmacovigilance department can be a ‘happening one’ or even a roller-coaster ride. This is irrespective of whether you work for a pharmaceutical company, service provider, monitoring centre, or regulatory agency. Dealing with the rigmarole is going to be a rewarding experience and a satisfying one as you ultimately contribute to the welfare […]

The Pharmacovigilance function is required to have a robust Quality Management System (QMS) and for this, one needs to have efficient standard operating procedures or SOPs. Apart from the SOPs, one can consider other documents, such as working practices (work instructions) or guidelines/guidance documents, as recommended in the QMS of the organization. The list of […]

Although remote audits and inspections have become a norm after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the limitations of remote auditing remain! There is no doubt that remote audits cannot take precedence over on-site or face-to-face audits. Hence, a middle path is needed, primarily when the whole industry evaluates using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning […]

The Pharmacovigilance Audit of a business partner can be tricky, as there may be direct or indirect commercial implications associated with the audit’s outcome. A business partner can be a distributor, wholesaler, or service provider. For the scope of this article, we will primarily focus on product distributors. There can be multiple business partners in […]

Many Pharmacovigilance and Quality personnel have approached me in the last few years, requesting a Pharmacovigilance Audit Checklist. I also used to be happy to share the version I had prepared in 2012 for my first audit assignment in the European Union. Some of the requestors reverted, stating that the checklist served the purpose, and […]

Use of blockchain can revolutionize Pharmacovigilance, for ensuring safe medicines for public health.

  All these years, Artificial Intelligence or AI was regarded as the future of Pharmacovigilance. Unexpectedly, COVID-19 has accelerated this to such an extent that one can safely say that the future is already ‘present’. The regulatory agencies have already started collaborating with the IT companies for augmenting AI for the large scale COVID-19 vaccine […]

In general, the overall process of product identification to authorization, may take at least 5-10 years. However, in case of pandemics, public health emergencies, or certain other cases, the overall timeline may need to get shortened. One such action, that supports this, is the rolling review. A rolling review is a regulatory tool, that the […]