Pharmacovigilance: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Pharmacovigilance is a field now everyone in healthcare industry is well aware of. Pharmacovigilance study ensure that the medicine consumed by patient is effective enough to be sell in market and having less harm as compared to its benefit. Historically the medicine safety was not the prime focus during approval of medicine but some unforeseen events happened in past emphasized the need of stringent rules and regulation on drug research and approval process. Though many events happened in past which harmed the mankind seriously but thalidomide was the biggest tragedy happened and turning to be the stepping stone of modern pharmacovigilance. Many countries like USA, Japan and UK realized the importance of pharmacovigilance to ensure patient safety and took serious steps to regularize the drug development process. At collaborative level also many countries come forward to strengthen pharmacovigilance. World health organization (WHO)-Uppsala Monitoring Centre, Council for International Organizations of Medical Science (CIOMS), International council on harmonization (ICH) and Good Pharmacovigilance Practice (GVP) are the bodies which lay down stringent rules and regulations on drug development process and primarily focused on drug safety. Now pharmacovigilance come long a way since its inception back in history, and modern pharmacovigilance is not remains limited to only check effectiveness and safety of medicine but its ensuring the patient safety. It uses many advance tools and trends for effective pharmacovigilance process and to dig more and more safety data related to medicine which finally uses to ensure patient safety.