The alarming spread of new psychoactive sub­stances has prompted the UK to pilot a system for easy reporting of harms associated with these illicit drugs.

There is much more to pharmacovigilance than the collection of numbers and data. If we really want to create a culture of drug safety, we need to start listening to patients.

Spontaneous adverse event reports pose significant challenges to pharmacovigilance scientists. How may we turn them into opportunities that benefit our pharmacovigilance systems?