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Researchers examine social media for adverse drug reaction reporting
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Oct. 15, 2012
A team led by a professor at the University of Virginia was awarded a $130,000 grant to study how social media can be used to identify adverse drug reactions.
The team, which includes collaborators at West Virginia University, will use analytic tools to explore how tens of thousands of pharmaceutical-related comments shared on various social media sites can be used as early warning signs. Adverse drug effects are now reported to the Federal Drug Administration through doctors whose patients report the effects to them.
The research group already has analyzed comments made on websites, blogs, Web forums and social networking sites from 2000 to early 2012 and were able to identify hundreds of thousands of documents containing adverse drug-related information. Their preliminary results suggest that these channels can provide accurate warnings much earlier — in some cases, years earlier — than existing channels.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/10/15/bibf1015.htm.
