The evolution of pharmacovigilance ecosystems: Does Moore's law invite the use of Occam's razor?

Aims: Moore's law predicts the doubling of complexity of integrated circuits every 2 years; Kryder's corollary assumes a doubling of data storage every 13 months. With the increasing volume of legislation, pharmacovigilance systems today are inherently complex, and the emphasis has shifted from reactive (responding to emerging risks) to planned, active, risk-proportionate approaches operating throughout the life cycle of medicines.

Methods: Exploration of the drivers for increasing complexity of pharmacovigilance systems, focusing on regulatory environment, data management and evaluation.

Results: Evaluation of postmarketing data plays an increasingly important role in pharmacovigilance. There is great interest on the part of all stakeholders in optimizing the use of these data. Innovative approaches, including pharmacogenetics and passive measures (sensors), will lead to increased complexity and volumes of data and inevitably to an increase in the volume of case reports. There is a multiplicity of regulations and guidelines on how to manage these data, with an inherent lack of harmonization.

Conclusion: We summarize the current characterization of safety data types, sources and the classification of these data. Using this benchmark, we discuss the future requirements of an effective pharmacovigilance ecosystem, keeping the principle of parsimony in mind. In this complex, continuously and rapidly changing environment, there is a need for a return to simplicity and pragmatism. The application of Occam's razor could help to support the rapid provision of new, affordable medicines with a positive benefit to risk profile.