Drug Safety Matters

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When reporting adverse reactions to drugs, people can choose from a plethora of different terms to describe their experience. But that makes it difficult and time-consuming for analysts to tell how similar two case safety reports are. A new method developed by UMC data scientist Lucie Gattepaille comes to the rescue.

This episode is part of the Uppsala Reports Long Reads series – the most topical stories from UMC’s pharmacovigilance magazine, brought to you in audio format. Find the original article here.

After the read, Uppsala Reports editor Gerard Ross interviews Lucie on her work behind the scenes and the broader implications of her research for the pharmacovigilance field.

Tune in to find out:

• How natural language processing can help connect related drug and adverse reaction terms
• What advantages the new method offers over MedDRA classifications
• Which pharmacovigilance tasks could benefit from this new research

Want to know more?
Lucie presented her work on vector representations for pharmacovigilance at the IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics in 2019. And here’s some background reading on distributed representations of words and phrases.

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Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.

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How do we minimise the harm caused to patients by medicines and medical devices? In October 2019, a diverse, multi-stakeholder group met in Erice, Italy and drew up a 10-point plan for improving patient safety worldwide.

This episode is part of the Uppsala Reports Long Reads series – the most topical stories from UMC’s pharmacovigilance magazine, brought to you in audio format. Find the original article here.

After the read, we reach UMC director Marie Lindquist in her home in Gothenburg, Sweden to discuss the relevance of the Erice statement, as the world copes with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tune in to find out:

• What actions we should be taking to protect patients from medicine-related harm
• Why collaboration between evidence-based medicine and pharmacovigilance is crucial
• Why transparency is of the essence when communicating uncertainty

Want to know more?

The full statement produced by the Erice group is entitled “Improving the detection, analysis, and reporting of harms in medicines and devices”.

The original Erice Declaration of 1997 laid the groundwork for good communication practices in the pharmacovigilance field and was updated in 2006 and in 2017.

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We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!

About UMC
Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.

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Herbal substances can be found in a number of pharmaceutical drugs, cosmetics and food supplements – so it's not surprising that using plant names inconsistently can have serious health consequences. But with so much confusion around medicinal plant names, it’s easy to get it wrong. Bob Allkin from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew explains what we can do about it.

Tune in to find out:

• How common, scientific and pharmaceutical plant names differ
• How Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Services works
• How healthcare and pharmacovigilance professionals working with herbal medicines can avoid mistakes

Want to know more?

Here are a few resources to get you started:

• Bob Allkin discusses the regulation of medicinal plant names in UMC’s magazine Uppsala Reports
• Kew’s “State of the World’s Plants 2017” report includes a chapter on use and regulation of medicinal plants around the world
• These are the most common mistakes when using plant names – and how to avoid them
• IDMP standards improve the description of medicinal products worldwide
• Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Services is freely accessible online – start browsing!

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We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!

About UMC
Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.

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As the end users of medicines, patients can provide first-hand information on side effects. The issues they report add a richness to our understanding of medicine safety that we could never achieve by relying on healthcare professionals’ reports alone – so it’s crucial that we listen to them. Linda Härmark from the Netherlands pharmacovigilance centre Lareb tells us more.

Tune in to find out:

• What patient reports reveal about people’s use of medicines
• How to make best use of the information relayed by patients
• What to consider when setting up a patient reporting system

Want to know more?

Here are a few reading resources to get you started:

• After fifteen years in the business, Lareb has lessons to share on implementing and running patient reporting systems.
• Pharmacovigilance pioneer Sten Olsson argues that patient reporting is the future of pharmacovigilance.
• Collaborating with patient organizations can help pharmacovigilance centres deliver medicine safety updates to the right audiences and understand how patients use medicines.
• Patient reports can help identify previously unrecognized side effects, like in the case of panic attacks with the contraceptive desogestrel.
• A collaborative signal detection workshop on patient reports taught Lareb and Uppsala Monitoring Centre staff some valuable lessons.
• Every year, the #MedSafetyWeek campaign raises awareness of medicine side effects and pharmacovigilance reporting systems – join in!

If you’d like to hear more from the Netherlands pharmacovigilance centre Lareb, check out this interview with Eugene van Puijenbroek on intuitive and clinical reasoning.

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We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!

About UMC
Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.

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Most of us want healthcare to be both patient-centric and evidence-based. But are those two goals compatible? Can we tailor healthcare to our unique circumstances­, while relying on the average statistical measurements that scientific evidence is based on? Emerging ideas in the philosophy of science are challenging a rigid reliance on evidence-based medicine and offering a more nuanced understanding of patient safety.

This episode is part of the Uppsala Reports Long Reads series – the most topical stories from UMC’s pharmacovigilance magazine, brought to you in audio format. Find the text version here.

Tune in to find out:

• What causal dispositions are
• Why pharmacovigilance would benefit from a new approach to causality
• How to promote trans-disciplinary approaches to medical inquiry

Want to know more?

Here are a few reading resources to get you started:

• The CauseHealth Risk and Safety project is bridging pharmacovigilance and philosophy of science
• Causal evidence and dispositions can improve our understanding of causality in medicine and public health
• Medical scientists and philosophers worldwide appeal to expand the notion of “evidence”
• Patient experiences can enhance the quality and safety of healthcare, say the authors of the Erice Call for Change

Got a story to share?
We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!

About UMC
Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.

Send us a voicemail!

Most women are prescribed some form of medication during their pregnancy. Yet we know very little about the safety of those medicines when they’re used during pregnancy or breastfeeding. New collaborative efforts are now underway to plug that knowledge gap.

This episode is part of the Uppsala Reports Long Reads series – the most topical stories from UMC’s pharmacovigilance magazine, brought to you in audio format. Find the text version here.

Tune in to find out:

• Why clinical trials often fail to include pregnant and breastfeeding women
• What the lack of safety information means for women who need medicines during pregnancy and breastfeeding
• How new multi-disciplinary initiatives are planning to boost pharmacovigilance activities related to pregnancy and lactation

Want to know more?

Read how EUROmediCAT plans to evaluate the safety of medicines in pregnancy in relation to the risk of congenital anomalies. 

Find out how ConcePTION wants to help women make informed decisions about the medications they need before, during and after pregnancy.

Read about:

• Lareb’s survey of pregnancy-related pharmacovigilance activities
• the history of women’s involvement in clinical trials
• the ethical debate surrounding the inclusion of pregnant women in research

Got a story to share?
We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!

About UMC
Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.

Send us a voicemail!

Fake medicines claim at least 200,000 lives every year, with the World Health Organization estimating that 1 in 10 medicines worldwide is now substandard or falsified. But with the market in illicit drugs worth up to $200 billion a year, and traffickers more likely to face a fine than jail time when they are caught, the financial incentives far outweigh the deterrents. So how do we put a stop to this deadly trade? Drug Safety Matters investigates with former Interpol officer and PMEDS program founder Aline Plançon.

Tune in to find out:

• How widespread and dangerous fake medicines are
• What makes pharmaceutical crime so successful
• What action is being taken to curb the problem
• How modern tracking technology can help
• What we can do to raise awareness

Want to know more?

• Read Aline Plançon’s book on fake medicines, Faux Médicaments: Un Crime Silencieux (in French).
• Find out how the World Health Organization is fighting falsified and substandard medicines in UMC’s magazine Uppsala Reports.
• Teach your children about falsified medicines with UMC’s comic book Annie & Mac’s Adventures: Lord Fake Strikes Again. It’s available in English and Spanish.
• Help raise awareness of the problem by joining the Fight the Fakes campaign.

Got a story to share?
We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!

About UMC
Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.