What To Do When Your Pharmaceuticals Company Does Not Have Time To Keep Track Of Adverse Reactions

19 January 2020

Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of developing hundreds of new medicines every year. Despite all of the testing that your company does to prevent particularly serious side effects from medications your company makes, there are still going to be several outlying cases where consumers have unpleasant side effects. Because your company has to log each of those incidents separately and then tally up the issues with a particular drug before making a choice to pull the drug, refine it, or just warn doctors and patients, it is a very time-consuming process your researchers may not have time to complete. Here is what you can do to ensure complete consumer safety and still have adequate logs for these outlying reactions. 

Pharmacovigiliance Consulting

Pharmacovigiliance is a field of expertise that covers everything from outlying drug reactions in consumers to categorically advising you and your company to remove a drug from the market. When your company does not have the financial means to hire some people to do this full time in your consumer protection department, you can hire consultants to do these tasks for you. 

​A pharmacovigiliant consultant will:

• Investigate all side effect claims and record them under each pertinent drug's file
• Include any medical reports supplied by prescribing doctors on the patients that had these side effects (names are withheld to protect patient confidentiality)
• Examine the reports to see if there are indeed medical reasons why consumers might experience previously unreported side effects
• Inquire as to what consumers experiencing these side effects did next (e.g., did they switch to a different medication, are they looking to sue, etc.)
• Advise you and your company about the medication and its potential for greater harm and risks versus its overall positive impact on consumers
• Advise you as to whether or not you should consider pulling the drug and/or editing its chemical makeup to remove the harmful side effects and risks
• Act as an expert witness in court testimony when and where needed

These tasks are just at the core of what the consultant can do. There are many more tasks. If those extra tasks fall within the scope of the consultant's work and job description, he/she will complete those tasks per your request. 

Taking the Next Step

With the incredibly good organization and investigation skills of these consultants, you can feel confident that your company is developing safe and effective medicines for most consumers. To take the next step, find a pharmacovigiliance consulting company that can send you a consultant. Then hire him/her as needed.