Maria Ale Vazquez-gragg*, RTI, RTP, United States Track: Research Presentation Topic: Public (e-)health, population health technologies, surveillance Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School Room: A-Pechet Room Date: 2012-09-15 04:00 PM – 04:45 PM Last modified: 2012-09-12

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Objective: Increase in social media sites made consumers pressure Pharmaceutical companies to move from the traditional monitoring of AE. This has been one of the reasons why drug-safety groups have refocused their efforts to what is considered a new trend for early signal detection: socialvigilance. Methods: we conducted a descriptive study of the prevalence of using social media in the top 10 global pharmaceutical corporations and 10 highest social networks groups. Results: all pharmaceutical companies reviewed have presence on social media sites and sponsored blogs. For reviewed drugs of these companies, all were mentioned in the network groups. However, these have not been systematically evaluated, specifically with respect to post containing the 4 criteria which trigger a reportable case. Literature studies demonstrated between 0,2% to 7% of forum posts contained all 4 criteria. Conclusion: Social media provides patient empowerment through easier access to information and delivers near real-time data to providers, health authorities and pharmaceutical companies. Being able to distinguish case reports from this data could provide earlier estimates for benefit/risk dynamics and signal detection trends. Pharmacovigilance professionals need to learn how to harness the empowered consumer and the ever changing social media field in order to analyze and identify the required data elements for reporting. Companies, vendors and governments need to work in partnership to drive the effectiveness of social media and pharmacovigilance. This transition in methodology will force companies to create a new PV group, “socialvigilance” to develop newer models of solution platforms. It will refocus and repurpose pharma to where it truly belongs – science and medicine