Digitalizing Risk Minimization Measures in EU: Explorative Co-design Workshops with Expert Stakeholders

Post-marketing risk minimization measures for medicines, e.g. package leaflets and patient cards, aim to ensure that patients and health care professionals receive timely and relevant medicines safety information. The use of digital technologies for risk minimization is emerging but still limited, despite being central in patients' and healthcare professionals' information access. There is currently limited high-level, strategic discussion about the digitalization of additional risk minimization measures.

To elicit key expert stakeholders' future visions of digital risk minimization measures in the European Union and to explore possible policy and healthcare implications of future digital risk minimization technologies.

Co-design workshops were conducted in three EU member states with clinicians, industry representatives, regulators, health information technology developers, and legal experts. Workshop transcripts and visual products were analyzed thematically in two coding cycles.

Digitalizing risk minimization measures will transform roles, responsibilities, and collaborations, as stakeholders revise their remits with digital strategies and forge new collaborations to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of new digital solutions. Success depends on revised implementation pathways that reflect patients' and healthcare professionals' digital access to medicines information and the diverse information ecosystems across the EU. Patients may gain new roles as active data subjects through remote monitoring, raising new ethical and legal considerations.

Digital risk minimization in the EU offers opportunities for timely, personalized interventions but presents challenges in implementation complexity, healthcare professionals' workload, and patient ethics, warranting more focused policy deliberation and research on digital health.