Tracking a Medicine's Regulatory Risk Management Commitments Provides Better Transparency and Oversight.

Pharmaceutical companies are required to provide Risk Management Plans (RMPs) to support the marketing authorisation of medicines. These RMPs contain information on efficacy and safety, outline risks or gaps in information, and detail commitments for post-authorisation pharmacovigilance (PV) studies. These plans aim to enhance understanding of a drug's benefit-risk profile and information on risk mitigation and labelling strategies to ensure end-users are aware of the risks that are associated with the product.

Post-approval evaluation of effectiveness of risk minimisation: methods, challenges and interpretation.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of drug risk-minimisation measures is mandatory for both risk evaluation and mitigation strategies (REMS) in the United States and risk management plans in the European Union (EU-RMPs). Such evaluations aim to assess the impact of risk-minimisation measures on the knowledge, attitudes or behaviours of healthcare professionals or patients, the incidence of safety concerns, and their impact on the overall benefit-risk balance. Although many effectiveness evaluation models and methods are available, regulatory guidance and policy are still evolving.

Web-based patient-reported outcomes in drug safety and risk management: challenges and opportunities?

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) from web-based sources are becoming increasingly important, providing opportunities for industry and regulators to understand the benefits and risks of medicines in a real-world context. Although some guidance exists for the use of adverse event (AE) reports from company-sponsored social network sites, this does not cover non-company-sponsored sites. Additionally, there are concerns about the validity of data from social media sources.