Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Web Forums for Adverse Events Detection: "Strontium Ranelate" Case Study.

Social media are proposed as a complementary data source for detection and characterisation of adverse drug reactions. While signal detection algorithms were implemented for generating signals in pharmacovigilance databases, the implementation of a graphical user interface supporting the selection and display of algorithms' results is not documented in the medical literature. Although collecting information on the chronology and the impact of adverse drug reactions is desirable to enable causality and quality assessment of potential signals detected in patients' posts, no tool has been proposed yet to consider such data.