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. 2019 Apr;105(4):954-961.
doi: 10.1002/cpt.1255. Epub 2018 Dec 11.

Innovation in Pharmacovigilance: Use of Artificial Intelligence in Adverse Event Case Processing

Juergen Schmider  1 , Krishan Kumar  2 , Chantal LaForest  3 , Brian Swankoski  4 , Karen Naim  5 , Patrick M Caubel  6
Affiliations

Innovation in Pharmacovigilance: Use of Artificial Intelligence in Adverse Event Case Processing

Juergen Schmider et al. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2019 Apr.

Abstract

Automation of pharmaceutical safety case processing represents a significant opportunity to affect the strongest cost driver for a company's overall pharmacovigilance budget. A pilot was undertaken to test the feasibility of using artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to automate processing of adverse event reports. The pilot paradigm was used to simultaneously test proposed solutions of three commercial vendors. The result confirmed the feasibility of using artificial intelligence-based technology to support extraction from adverse event source documents and evaluation of case validity. In addition, the pilot demonstrated viability of the use of safety database data fields as a surrogate for otherwise time-consuming and costly direct annotation of source documents. Finally, the evaluation and scoring method used in the pilot was able to differentiate vendor capabilities and identify the best candidate to move into the discovery phase.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no competing interests for this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Case processing deliverables.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Summary of F1 scores for nine entity types. Overall composite scores were 0.72, 0.52, 0.74, and 0.69 for vendor 1, vendor 2, vendor 3, and the Pfizer Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence, respectively. AE, adverse event; DOB, date of birth.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Heat map for case‐level accuracy. AI CoE, Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Process element selected for proof of concept.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Pilot design.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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