Informatics In-Depth Focus 2014

• Reviewing the roles and opportunities for informatics in pharmacovigilance
  Brittany L. Melton, University of Kansas
  The concept of pharmacovigilance is not new. Since the thalidomide tragedies of the early-1960s, countries worldwide have recognised the need to continually monitor drug safety. In its efforts to guide drug safety practices, the WHO defined pharmacovigilance as ‘the science and activities relating to the detection, assess- ment, understanding, and prevention of adverse effects or any other possible drug-related problems’1. Given the broad scope of pharmacovigilance, it is natural to expect technology to play a role in order to monitor and react to new information in a timely manner. To that end, multiple informatics approaches have been developed to address this need.
• Laboratory informatics: a wind of change?
  John Trigg, phaseFour Informatics
  We’re only too familiar with the impact of digital technologies in almost every aspect of life. In some domains the impact has been dramatic, with established industries facing significant change and ‘sink or swim’ decisions. The outcomes have been a mixture of remarkable success stories in some instances, or dismal failures in others. In the laboratory world, the pace of digital change has been relatively leisurely. It has taken about four decades or so to reach a point where a growing number of laboratories can consider themselves to be ‘electronic’ or ‘paperless’. From the early days of digital electronics and the evolving capability to convert analogue signals into digital outputs, data capture, data processing and laboratory automation have all progressed with increasing levels of sophistication.