Pharmacovigilance is the branch of science that deals with the safety of drugs after they have been approved for use. It basically involves identification, evaluation, monitoring and prevention of adverse reactions associated with the usage of drugs. Pharmacovigilance is an important part of clinical research and plays a crucial role in avoiding drug related disasters and toxicity. These activities are operated at global level and contribute towards creating health awareness and safe drug usage among public. There are a large number of Pharmacovigilance centers worldwide directly implicating the definitive role of this branch of science in developing a better healthcare system.

Depending upon the drug safety reports, there are higher chances for a drug or device to be called off the market or restrictions on its use to be laid upon.  Healthcare industry has witnessed a tremendous growth in the Pharmacovigilance market in the recent years due to increasing concerns regarding the safety of the marketed products, need to achieve and maintain regulatory compliance and growing awareness among public. Above all, high incidence of chronic and acute diseases and subsequent increase in drug consumption resulted in the growth of pharmacovigilance market across the globe. According to a study carried out by Grand View research Inc., global pharmacovigilance market is expected to reach 5.51 billion US dollars by 2020.

Classification of pharmacovigilance market is made on the basis of three aspects – phases of clinical trials, reporting methods and service providers. Clinical trials are commonly classified into different phases namely preclinical studies, phase I, II, III and IV. As per recent reports published on pharmacovigilance market, phase IV studies, also called post market surveillance, accounted for a major share of the Pharmacovigilance market. Pharmacovigilance involves a spectrum of methods to report adverse drug reactions namely spontaneous reporting, intensified adverse drug reaction reporting, targeted reporting, cohort event monitoring and EHR mining of which the spontaneous reporting method maintained its lead in terms of revenue generation. This method is considered the most appropriate since it involves voluntary submission of individual case safety reports directly by doctors, patients and pharmaceutical manufacturers to the national pharmacovigilance centers. Based on the types of service providers, the pharmacovigilance market has been classified into two types namely, in-house and outsourcing. In order to minimize the upfront investments, most of the pharmaceutical companies are outsourcing the pharmacovigilance process to clinical research organizations or third party service providers.

In terms of geography, the regions assessed include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Of these regions, North America accounted for around 40% of the pharmacovigilance market worldwide. Pharmacovigilance market in Asia Pacific witnessed significant growth owing to large pool of patients, presence of highly efficient manpower and infrastructure and competitive business environment.

Corporate giants such as Accenture plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Clinquest Group B.V., Pfizer, Inc., Cognizant Technology Solutions, PAREXEL International Corporation, Covance, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK), PRA Health Sciences, Inc., ICON plc, Wipro Limited, iGATE Corporation, iMEDGlobal Corporation, inVentiv Health, Inc., Novartis International AG, Pharmaceutical Product Development, LLC. (PPD), Quintiles Transnational Holdings, Inc., Sanofi S.A., and Synowledge LLC are key players in the current pharmacovigilance market.

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If you are interested in a career in pharmacovigilance, you may want to enroll in a formal pharmacovigilance training program. To know more about the various pharmacovigilance programs offered by the James Lind Institute please see the following link: Tell Me More About Pharmacovigilance Programs