Social Media Monitoring and Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting in Pharmacovigilance: An Overview of the Regulatory Landscape

In the context of the European Union's Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project titled Web-Recognizing Adverse Drug Reactions (WEB-RADR; http://web-radr.eu), which focuses on the assessment of new data sources and the optimization of the collection of information on suspected adverse reactions in pharmacovigilance, a survey was performed in 182 countries/jurisdictions in 2014 to 2015. The goal was to gather information on existing practices, guidance, and legal requirements on social media monitoring to identify potential safety issues related to medicines. The survey response rate was 100%. The results revealed that 80% of the surveyed countries do not have such necessities despite the fact that 63% of these countries have an established national pharmacovigilance system. Among the countries having an established pharmacovigilance system, only 29% have specific requirements, most countries do have similar provisions as set out in the EU guidelines on Good Pharmacovigilance Practices (GVP). A small subset of countries within the European Economic Area (EEA) have requirements that exceed those stated in GVP, namely, Italy, France, Sweden, and the UK. Outside the EEA, Turkey and the United States have also developed further guidance. The outcome of the survey will inform the development of a future policy framework on the further use of social media as new pharmacovigilance data source in the EEA. In addition, this paper elaborates on some current practical case management issues encountered by companies based on the existing regulatory guidance.