Literature Surveillance

Increasing Precision and Reducing Recall with Robust Strategies and Technology Platforms

Literature surveillance is an important tool in the suite of monitoring activities to ensure the safety of medicinal products. The success of published literature surveillance is measured by precision and sensitivity. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies must screen and analyze published literature from the clinical development stage, through post-marketing, as part of their pharmacovigilance obligations. It is critical to detect safety signals as soon as possible to affect appropriate measures and protect patient safety.

PRA Health Sciences has established consistent processes and clear accountabilities for literature surveillance to identify adverse drug reactions, assess the expeditability of adverse reactions, review aggregate safety reports, and perform signal detection and assessment. To ensure precision, PRA monitors global scientific and medical publications using large databases such as Medline and Embase, as well as country-level journals.