The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that it has begun daily publication of adverse event data from the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).
The agency says that “this represents a significant step forward in modernizing the agency’s safety monitoring infrastructure and demonstrates its commitment to radical transparency and real-time protection of public health.”
FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, MD, said: “Adverse event reporting should be fast, seamless and transparent. People who navigate the government’s clunky adverse event reporting websites should not have to wait months for that information to become public. We’re closing that waiting period and will continue to streamline the process from start to finish.”
FAERS is the FDA’s primary database for collecting and analyzing adverse event reports, serious medication errors, and product quality complaints for prescription drugs and therapeutic biologics. It contains reports submitted by healthcare professionals, consumers and manufacturers.
The FDA says the move “is one of many steps in the FDA’s broader data modernization strategy to streamline all of its adverse event reporting systems and increase reporting frequency across all systems to identify safety signals faster.”
The public can view the latest adverse event data on the FAERS Public Dashboard. The FDA encourages healthcare professionals and consumers to report adverse events to the FDA’s MedWatch site.
