Active Surveillance Method in Pharmacovigilance

 As active surveillance takes more time and money, it is employed less frequently in emergency situations. However, it is frequently more thorough than passive monitoring. It's typically used to keep track of case counts when an outbreak has started or is suspected. Community health workers may be instructed to aggressively discover cases in the community in order to identify individuals who do not seek care at medical institutions.

To put it another way, it confirms a specific amount of adverse events through a continuous, pre-planned procedure. It's a way of ensuring that passive reports are representative and that health-related occurrences are reported more thoroughly. Hence, getting your clinical research training and certification can be a great investment in your professional future. 

A) Sentinel Sites:

1) This entails gathering AE data on a subset of the overall population in order to gain insight into the wider population. For instance; to research about the various trends in the diseases.

2) It is more effective for drugs used predominantly in institutional settings such as hospitals, nursing homes, and other such facilities.

3) To ensure that these sites confine complete and accurate data on reported adverse occurrences.

B) Drug event monitoring : 

1) This method is used in cohort-based, prospective, potential, and observational studies.

2) Patients can be identified using electronic prescribing data or automated health-care claims.

3) The data is obtained by sending a follow-up questionnaire to the recommended physician at pre-determined intervals.

4) The questionnaires can include questions about the patient's demographics, treatment duration, dosage, clinical events, relevant previous history, and so on.

C) Registries:

1) A list of patients with the same characteristics or identical representatives is called as a registry.

2) The registries maybe a disease specific, drug specific or exposure registry.

3) Some of the exposure registries address drug exposures in particular population, such as pregnant women. 

4) Patients can be followed over time and included in a group study to collect facts on adverse events using uniform feedback forms. 

D) Cohort Study: 

1) A cohort is a group of people who are observed for a certain period of time and have similar features, such as drug exposure.

2) Using comparable data sources, many adverse events can be investigated in this sort of study.

3) It is planned prior to the start of the drug therapy.

4) Since the start of therapy, every patient has been monitored for adverse events.

5) It is capable of making precise comparisons between drugs.

Therefore, Active surveillance can provide accurate and comprehensive data, but methods and data interpretation must be properly devised. Maintaining active sentinel systems may be costly.