Thursday, 15 November 2012

Understanding Pharmacovigilance System & Processes

According to WHO “Pharmacovigilance is the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other drug-related problem.” In other words the goal of pharmacovigilance is getting the best outcome of therapy by patient care and surveillance. Good pharmacovigilance will identify the risks and risk factors related to adverse drug reactions (ADRs) during the complete product life cycle. This information allows for intelligent, evidence-based prescription and has the potential for preventing ADRs.

The importance of Pharmacovigilance

The primary aim is to enhance patient safety and to provide reliable and balanced information for the effective use of medicines. The secondary aim is communication of new safety ?ndings to the national and international regulatory authority in a timely manner. Pharmacovigilance programmes promote the education and training in this field and its effective communication to the public. Pharmacovigilance identify adverse events and their rates with the possible risk factors. It assesses causality with respect to clinical relevance, frequency and distribution of ADRs, which helps to understand the benefit, harm, effectiveness and risk of medicines.

Good Pharmacovigilance Practice

The concept of pharmacovigilance is normally not well understood, either by health professionals, patients or the general population. Development of guidelines and standards are required for a coherent and good pharmacovigilance system, which describe the practical details of the intended information Now.

Good pharmacovigilance systems should have the capability for receiving and processing of reports with veri?cation, interpretation and case causality assessment. It should have databases and procedures for data analysis, review and signal detection. An effective coordination between health care settings, regulatory and public health activities is required. Also regular training of health care workers in reporting adverse reactions improves both active and passive reporting.

Spontaneous reporting is a system whereby case reports of adverse drug events are voluntarily submitted by health professionals, pharmaceutical companies or consumers to the national pharmacovigilance centre. It is basically the reporting of a suspected adverse reaction on the initiative of the health professional that becomes aware of the problem, or on the patient’s initiative. Cohort event monitoring refers to the use of prospective, observational cohort studies of patients to whom the medicine of interest has been administered with recording of all adverse events.

Pharmacovigilance system may be run by a person or group of persons with expert knowledge of drug safety and adverse events under the independent government setup. The Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), Directorate General of Health Services under the aegis of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India in collaboration with Indian Pharmacopeia commission is initiating a nation-wide pharmacovigilance programme for protecting the health of the patients by assuring drug safety. The programme shall be coordinated by the Indian Pharmacopeia commission, Ghaziabad as a National Coordinating Centre (NCC). The centre will operate under the supervision of a Steering Committee.

We at WorkSure provide complete Pharmacovigilance system and Process solutions for signal detection, signal evaluation, medical review and causality assessment of safety data (AEs, SAEs, SUSARs etc). We also provide medical writing services for preparation of safety reports eg ICSRs, PSURs etc as per regulatory requirements, and resolving queries from regulatory authorities on safety issues.

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Sunday, 9 September 2012

Medical Writing


Medical writing, an integral part of medical research and communication, can be defined as an art of creating scientific documents with the aim of transmitting information of technical nature in lucid and simple manner to health care professionals, scientific community, general public and patients. Target audience needs normally define the pattern of medical writing. The language for medical education of Physician/healthcare professional has to be highly technical while simple and lay communications are required to connect with general public or patients. There is a significant need for medical writing in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research organizations (CROs) and other health communication agencies. WorkSure™ medical writing team supports an umbrella which includes scientific writing for marketing promotions, sales team training and education, medical education, patient and public education, medical research and regulatory communications. Any writing goes through a stringent medical review process for quality control and to prevent plagiarism.

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Saturday, 25 August 2012

Medical Affairs

Medical Affairs identify and address the medical needs associated with products, therapies and disease states thereby driving improvement in patient outcomes in line with commercial objectives. Medical Affairs came into existence in pharmaceutical and biotech industries to aid interactions between health care professionals and company representatives. However with time, the role of Medical Affairs has transformed from being a traditional support function to an equal partner role. Besides providing scientific and medical information to healthcare professionals, key opinion leaders and regulatory bodies, Medical Affairs plays an important role in promoting proper and ethical use of a company’s products and therapies for the benefit of mankind. Thus, Medical Affairs function supplements the work of Research & Development and also enhances sales and marketing efforts. By and large Medical Affairs operates as the medical conscience of the company and contributes to its growth and success. Strengthened regulatory and public scrutiny, growing competition and swelling budget for drug development has made the Medical Affairs role even more crucial to pharmaceutical companies' success. Nevertheless the companies face challenge in managing the Medical department due to high manpower costs.

WorkSure™ Medical Affairs provides consulting services to sales & marketing, clinical trials, pharmacovigilance, regulatory and legal departments. We at WorkSure are proactive at all levels, identify novel approaches and establish dedicated boundary-spanning teams for different companies. We work at all stages in the life cycle of a biopharmaceutical product/device. The various Medical Affairs functions that we offer are:

Medico- Marketing & business development
The complexity of medical marketing is one of the important aspects of a business proposal in the pharmaceutical industry. Promotion refers to all informational and convincing activities by company and distributors, the effect of which is to bring about the prescription, supply, purchase and/or use of medicinal drugs. Medical Affairs review external communications for ethical and credible promotion of all brands. Across product life cycle, the Medical Affairs provide guidance on therapy positioning in all marketing and promotional campaigns and keep a close watch on the approvals. Medical Affair activities ensure appropriate market conditioning which has a real impact on increasing product awareness.

KOL management & interfacing responsibilities
The Key opinion leader (KOL) management should be aligned with both scientific and commercial perspectives which require optimal organizational structure. Harmonizing KOL activity is increasingly crucial for both compliance and effectiveness. The communication of meaningful information like crafting scientific exchange tools and resources for continued medical education on disease state, current therapeutics, and patient care gaps is the underpinning of ongoing interaction between KOLs and Medical Affairs function.

Clinical research & regulatory activities
Medical Affairs team works closely with the clinical development team for planning and organizing clinical trials. They support clinical development plan, protocol development, investigator selection and meetings, ongoing data maintenance and management, statistical analysis & interpretation, report writing activities etc. They are involved in pharmacovigilance, regulatory support and post marketing safety and surveillance studies. Medical Affairs professionals evaluate and conduct pharmacoeconomic studies to facilitate cost effective health care decision making. The Medical Affairs department plays a central role in strategizing regular audits for checking compliance and quality assurance.
Medical education and training
The role of the Medical Affairs function is to educate health care professionals through the delivery of precise, complete and impartial information that supports a product. External education activities include CMEs, seminars, small group meetings, updates and conferences etc. A sales representative also plays a reasonable role in providing customers i.e. doctors with recent updated information about the products and guidelines. So, sales representatives are also required to be trained to stay abreast with the latest information on the products, and also industry regulations.

Medical communications
Field of medicine is ever-changing with constant flow of new knowledge and information. One of the main responsibilities is supplying the medical profession with the best available information pertaining to their area of interest. Medical writing has established as an important function of Medical Affairs, because it requires specialized knowledge and skills to write scientific documents which are well-structured, and presented in a clear and lucid manner.

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