Recognising Adverse Drug Reactions: Working together to improve pharmacovigilance through new technology

Detecting the adverse effects of medicines as well as their misuse poses a big challenge for health authorities. Under-reporting is an issue, with individuals sometimes more likely to express their frustration via social media channels than consult their doctor. By bringing together industry and academic experts, regulators, patients and small and medium-sized enterprises, the Innovative Health Initiative (IMI’s) WEB-RADR project developed a mobile application which allows patients to directly report potential medicine side effects and also receive reliable information on their drugs. 

The WEB-RADR 1 project, launched in September 2014, developed mobile apps to support the reporting of ADRs. The WEB-RADR 2 project, launched in September 2018, seeks to exploit the outputs of WEB-RADR 1 and supports the integration of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and bi-directional mapping of SNOMED CT and MedDRA terminologies.

The WEB-RADR project is supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI JU) under grant agreement n° 115632, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution.

The WEB-RADR 2 project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 807010. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA https://www.imi.europa.eu