Sources of Safety Data and Statistical Strategies for Design and Analysis: Postmarket Surveillance

Safety data are continuously evaluated throughout the life cycle of a medical product to accurately assess and characterize the risks associated with the product. The knowledge about a medical product's safety profile continually evolves as safety data accumulate.

This paper discusses data sources and analysis considerations for safety signal detection after a medical product is approved for marketing. This manuscript is the second in a series of papers from the American Statistical Association Biopharmaceutical Section Safety Working Group.

We share our recommendations for the statistical and graphical methodologies necessary to appropriately analyze, report, and interpret safety outcomes, and we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of safety data obtained from passive postmarketing surveillance systems compared to other sources.

Signal detection has traditionally relied on spontaneous reporting databases that have been available worldwide for decades. However, current regulatory guidelines and ease of reporting have increased the size of these databases exponentially over the last few years. With such large databases, data-mining tools using disproportionality analysis and helpful graphics are often used to detect potential signals. Although the data sources have many limitations, analyses of these data have been successful at identifying safety signals postmarketing. Experience analyzing these dynamic data is useful in understanding the potential and limitations of analyses with new data sources such as social media, claims, or electronic medical records data.