Pharmacovigilance & Drug Safety

Adverse drug reactions can be considered a form of toxicity or enhanced drug effects that occur during appropriate use (eg, when drug metabolism is temporarily inhibited by a disorder or another drug). In the US, 3 to 7% of all hospitalizations are due to adverse drug reactions. ADRs occur during 10 to 20% of hospitalizations; about 10 to 20% of these ADRs are severe. Incidence of death due to ADRs is unknown; suggested rates of 0.5 to 0.9% may be falsely high because many of the patients included had serious and complex disorders. Incidence and severity of adverse drug reactions vary by patient characteristics (eg, age, sex, ethnicity, coexisting disorders, genetic or geographic factors) and by drug factors (eg, type of drug, administration route, treatment duration, dosage, and bioavailability). Incidence is higher with advanced age and polypharmacy.

Pharmacovigilance and Risk Management comprises set of pharmacovigilance activities and interventions designed to identify, characterise, prevent or minimise risks relating to medicinal and therapeutic products including the assessment of the effectiveness of their clinical interventions and combination therapies. Drug industry need to promote companies in pharmacovigilance practice to use information technology and to review softwares used in pharmacovigilance and clinical trials. Monitoring unlicensed, off labels and orphan drugs is major task in risk management. Many experts from different pharmacovigilance CRO's , pharmacovigilance service providers and industrial delegates are participating in this conference to share their knowledge and discuss about the new updates.

The role of Good Pharmacovigilance Practice and Pharmacoepidemiology in Risk Management is mainly to increase the probability of beneficial effects of a drug in a population than the probability of adverse effects and to maintain the Good Reporting Practices by avoiding the major problems in risk management. Also it is important to concentrate on Signal investigation by gathering the information on new or unknown drug effects that is potentially caused by a medicine and that finally should lead to ensuring safety. The pharmacovigilance and clinical trials services providing companies should have the Pharmacovigilance certification.

Pharmacy practice is the field of pharmacy which involves developing the professional roles of pharmacists. It includes Disease-state management, Clinical drug interventions, Pharmacy professional development and pharmaceutical care, pharmaceutical compounding and health psychology, patient care, drug abuse prevention, prevention of drug interactions or minimisation of adverse events and drug incompatibility and community pharmacy.

In Clinical Pharmacology and Biopharmaceutics track we will discuss about the Rational drug management of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders, and Management of psychiatric disorders and autoimmune disorders. Along with clinical trials Bioavailability and bioequivalence studies also plays major role in clinical research. The global market for Bio pharmaceutics in 2013 was $305.1 million, which is expected to reach about $326.3 million by year-end 2014. The projected PAT instrumentation market is expected to be valued at around $450.6 million by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7% for the period of 2014 to 2019.

Clinical Trials on various diseases include Clinical Trials in long chronic diseases like AIDS, Benign and Malignant Tumours, Cardiovascular diseases, Diabetes, Clinical Trials on Monoclonal and Polyclonal Antibodies, Neurological, Physiological and Psychological Disorders

Good data quality management in pharmacovigilance can be relied only on information gathered from the collection of individual case safety reports and other pharmacoepidemiological data. Quality management consists of quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvements. The pharmacovigilance data processing cycle starts with data collection and, in computerised systems, data entry; the next step is data storage and maintenance; followed by data selection, retrieval and manipulation. The resulting data output is analysed and assessed. Finally, conclusions are drawn and decisions are made. The quality of a pharmacovigilance data system can be defined as a measure of excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficiencies and significant variations and the  data quality management includes all the activities that organizations use to direct, control and coordinate the quality of data.

Concept of Pharmacovigilance and its Significance enhances the impact of pharmacovigilance on patient welfare and public health and to know what is pharmacovigilance. This track gives a brief discussion on Pharmacovigilance role in healthcare system. Pharmacovigilance legislation gives an outlook on the rules and laws to follow in Pharmacovigilance practice. The Role of Pharma industries in the improvement of pharmacovigilance system is very crucial to maintain the safety data, Detection and Evaluation of drug safety signals through manual and medical devices reporting. Pharmacovigilance scope also deals as Ecopharmacovigilance (EPV), pharmacoenvironmentology and pharmacovigilance in herbal medicines.

The clinical trial industry is constantly evolving with diversified clinical research technologies and new clinical studies are being launched at an ever-growing pace. Clinical trials have always been a vital part of the medicine development process, as they provide clinical data on the best ways for treating pathological disorders and diseases. The importance of diversity in industrial clinical trials and clinical research is to ensure that industrial clinical trials are doing due diligence and being as strategic as possible in their results. This diversity makes us to better understand the unmet medical needs of patients.

In Clinical Research, Statistics plays a prominent role in regulatory submissions. Statistical analysis of Pharmacovigilance can be achieved by several guidelines mainly ICH guidelines. Adverse drug reaction reports can also be considered for the regulatory submission.

Case Report in Clinical Trials plays a key role in Clinical Research. Case reports may be on unexpected association between diseases, disorders or symptoms. An unexpected event in the course of observing, treating a patient, possibilities of pathogenesis of a disease or an adverse effect. Unique or rare salient features of a disease or therapeutic approaches or a notable variation of the anatomical structures.

Drug Safety heavily focuses on adverse drug reactions which are defined as any response to a drug which is noxious and unintended, including lack of efficacy. Medication errors such as overdose, and misuse and abuse of a drug as well as drug exposure during pregnancy and breastfeeding, are also of interest, even without an adverse event, because they may result in an adverse drug reaction. Information received from patients and healthcare providers via pharmacovigilance agreements (PVAs), as well as other sources such as the medical literature, plays a critical role in providing the data necessary for pharmacovigilance to take place. Ultimately, drug safety is concerned with identifying the hazards associated with pharmaceutical products and with minimizing the risk of any harm that may come to patients. Companies must conduct a comprehensive drug safety and pharmacovigilance audit to assess their compliance with worldwide laws, regulations, and guidance.

There is an advantage in centralising all safety data, clinical data, analysis and reporting with one provider. Pharmacovigilance Software tool provides comprehensive analysis of adverse events arising from the use of Pharmaceutical products (Medicinal Product, Medical Device, Vaccines, Non-Drug Therapy and Veterinary Medicinal Product). The drug safety database allows the risk- benefit analysis of medicinal products taking into account new and emerging information, in the context of cumulative information. Pharmacovigilance since beginning has been a compliance driven activity, wherein your regulatory compliance determines company’s risk assessment scores. A drug safety database offers scheduling of alerts for expedited cases, follow-up cases and PSUR/PADER reports submission to meet regulatory timeline compliance.

Due to the changing resources necessary to fulfil the regulatory requirements, some companies also choose to outsource or out task regulatory affairs to external service providers. Regulatory Affairs department is constantly evolving and growing and is the one which is least impacted during the Acquisition and Merger, and also during recession. The global pharmacovigilance market and Business opportunity was valued at USD 2,408.0 million in 2013 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.6% during the forecast period. Phase III clinical trials market was the second largest and was valued at over USD 750.0 million in 2013.

Regulatory Affairs for clinical trials is the major part in the clinical trials approaches. Every clinical trial must be analysed according to the Regulatory Affairs Guidelines. There are several Regulatory Affairs departments depending upon the countries within ever growing pace of companies. Global Harmonization in standards has led to consistent approach in regulatory submissions and hence its review.

Forensic toxicology is the use of toxicology and disciplines such as analytical chemistry, pharmacology and clinical chemistry to aid medical or legal investigation of death, poisoning, and drug use.