EMA to screen medical literature for 400 active substance groups

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has published the list of active substances and a reference to the journals that will be covered by its new medical literature monitoring service. This service will start with a limited number of active substances on 1 July 2015 and will be fully rolled out in September 2015. A guide, a training video and a document detailing the inclusion and exclusion criteria to be used when screening the literature are also available on a dedicated webpage.

Medical literature is an important source of information on suspected adverse reactions reported on medicines. The European Union's (EU) pharmacovigilance legislation has given EMA responsibility for the monitoring of selected medical literature for a defined list of active substances used in medicines and for entering identified reports of suspected adverse reactions in EudraVigilance, the EU adverse drug reaction collection and management system.

This initiative aims to improve the safety monitoring of medicines by enhancing the quality and consistency of data reported in EudraVigilance. It is provided as a service to industry which, for the active substances and literature covered by the EMA activities, will no longer be obliged to enter the information on suspected adverse reactions into EudraVigilance. Individual cases of suspected adverse reactions found in the literature will be made available to marketing-authorisation holders so they can include them in their safety databases and meet their reporting obligations outside the European Economic Area.

For further details see EMA

Posted by Tim Sandle