An online adverse drug reaction reporting system for pharmacovigilance

Abstract

Pharmacovigilance in general if done poorly, adversely affects the quality, safety and efficacy of drugs as well as public health in general. According to National Drug Authority, ”There are still various delays in the ADRs reporting system in Uganda”, because the current system of reporting ADRs in Uganda is paper based spontaneous reporting, this is rather a slow system, uses a lot of human labour, does not enforce confidentiality and security of information. This research therefore develops an online system through carrying out interviews using questionnaire approach, reviewing journals and existing publications in order to establish system requirements. System design was carried out by use of Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) and Entity Relation Diagrams (ERDs)in order to model the system processes and entities. Mysql was used to implement the server based database, Hyper Text Mark up Language(HTML)and Javascript were used to develop graphical user interfaces and the PHP web scripting language was used to enforce interaction with the database. The resulting system was tested and validated. It was able to meet the requirements specifications and address the loopholes of the previous system such as data confidentiality and security. It also provided faster data delivery, retrieval and querrying. In future research should be done on the attitudes of healthcare providers towards reporting adverse drug reactions. A datawarehouse should be developed.