Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a new iPhone application to enroll health care practitioners and the general public in drug safety. Called MedWatcher, the new app lets users track the latest FDA drug safety alerts. It also provides a vehicle for users to report drug side effects, and to view reports of adverse events submitted by patients and physicians.
MedWatcher contains information about thousands of FDA medications. Users can customize the app based on the medications they work with. They can view FDA generated alerts, create news feeds about a chosen drug, and set preferences to receive future alerts and news about medications. Users can also bring up reviews by patients and providers. They may even submit a review as a patient/clinician about any adverse events they, or their patients have encountered.
Voluntary drug safety surveillance has traditionally been sparse. The hope is that MedWatcher will encourage increased participation in surveillance by allowing people to participate in the process. Problem drugs will be more readily identified, and the side effects of medicines will be more widely disseminated and understood.
MedWatcher is supported by two unique, user-friendly forms—one for clinicians and one for patients. Reports of serious adverse events are reviewed by members of the Children's Computational Epidemiology Group, submitted to the FDA and displayed in the app. Until now, reporting adverse events has been a complicated and lengthy process: clinicians needed to interrupt their workflow to submit information; and patients were simply intimidated by the process. MedWatcher's easy-to-use mobile app reduces the complexity and intimidation factor for both, improving drug safety surveillance.
For more info, check out this MedWatcher press release.
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Alex A. Kecskes has written hundreds of published articles on health/fitness, "green" issues, TV/film entertainment, restaurant reviews and many other topics. As a former Andy/Belding/One Show ad agency copywriter, he also writes web content, ads, brochures, sales letters, mailers and scripts for national B2B and B2C clients.
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