8DECEMBER - 2020TECH OUTLOOKIN MY OPINIONHow Pharma CIOs Can Use Big Data Techniques to Improve Drug SafetyBy Christy Wilson, Sr. Director, Corporate Audience Marketing, Elsevier R&D SolutionsFor pharmaceutical companies, the safety of their products is of paramount concern. Safeguarding the wellbeing of patients and mitigating the risk of punitive fines from regulatory agencies, such as the FDA in the US and EMA in Europe, are essential elements of day-to-day strategy. Considerable sums of money are spent on rigorously testing drugs and medicinal products, as well as carrying out ongoing monitoring once a drug reaches the market and is used by patients. But what happens when one safe and effective drug interferes with another, because a patient or clinician puts the two together, not knowing that a potentially harmful drug-drug interaction (DDI) might occur?By some estimates, DDIs account for more than 30 percent of all drug adverse reactions. With over 59 percent of the US population taking at least one prescription drug, and a further 15 percent taking more than five prescriptions at a time­coupled with an aging population in the Western world­the potential for DDIs has dramatically increased. DDI exposure is responsible for up to 0.17 percent of the nearly 130 million emergency department visits that occur annually in the United States. In addition, DDIs are a leading contributing cause to drug failure and market withdrawals. For the sake of patients, the health care system, and a company's bottom line, prevention of DDIs is key­and this is where the CIO has a role to play.A daunting task for CIOsThe practice of monitoring the effects of medical drugs for adverse or harmful events is called pharmacovigilance (PV). Today, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly adopting "proactive PV" to help ensure the safety of a new entity as early as possible in the discovery/development Christy Wilson
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