Piloting Health Records and Drug Reaction Reporting

In conjunction with Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Pfizer is determining whether having physicians use computerized patient health records will increase the number of adverse drug side effects reported to FDA, according to the Wall Street Journal. In this three-month pilot program, when physicians enter information into the chart that says they dropped a drug due to a side effect, a pop-up box asks for more information and sends it along through an outside agency to the FDA. "The public-health impact is much quicker recognition of problems with medicines," Brigham and Women's internist Jeffrey Linder says. Eli Lilly has a similar pilot underway at the Indiana University School of Medicine.