Rebecca Chandler
@RebeccaChandle1
Medical Doctor, UMC
Topics highlighted at the conference, which was hosted by the Charles University and the Czech Pharmaceutical Society, were risk management and benefit–risk in pharmacovigilance, new methodologies of signal detection and emerging sources of pharmacovigilance data, vaccines, herbals, as well as benefits and risks of medicines for women.
Among the keynote lectures were sessions on the future of pharmacovigilance, pharmacogenomics, patient safety, and the global perspective on big data by UMC’s director Dr Marie Lindquist.
A roundtable discussion by members the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee of the European Medicines Agency and a panel discussion on safety communication were also offered in the general meeting hall.
UMC was represented at the conference in a variety of ways. Dr Lindquist and former director Prof Ralph Edwards were active participants in several sessions, with many additional contributions from various UMC teams.
From the IT development department, the technology evangelist Magnus Wallberg gave a presentation at the pre-conference course on the topic of Advanced data collection methods (social media, active surveillance, mobile technologies). The communications team was present with an oral presentation by the communications expert Bruce Hugman.
UMC’s research department was well represented with Dr Rebecca Chandler, medical doctor, giving an oral presentation as well as submitting a poster on vaccines. Posters were also submitted by Dr Ola Caster, senior researcher, and Sara Hult, research pharmacist. Dr Caster was awarded first prize in the poster competition with his entry “vigiRank Improves Real-World Signal Detection Performance: Prospective Results from International Pharmacovigilance” – it’s the first time that a UMC poster has received this honour.
