A High Performance Agent-Based System for Reporting Suspected Adverse Drug Reactions

Abstract

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) represent a serious worldwide problem. Current post-marketing ADR detection approaches largely rely on spontaneous reports filed by various healthcare professionals such as physicians, pharmacists et.al.. Underreporting is a serious deficiency of these methods - the actually reported adverse events represent less than 10% of all cases. Studies show that two important reasons that cause the underreporting are: 1) healthcare professionals are unaware of encountered ADRs, especially for those unusual ADRs, 2) they are too busy to voluntarily report ADRs since it takes a lot of time to fill out the reporting forms. This paper addresses these two issues by developing a high performance agent-based ADR reporting system. The system can 1) help healthcare professionals detect the causal relationship between a drug and an ADR by analyzing patients' electronic records, 2) make the reporting much easier by automatically linking the patients' electronic data with the reporting form.