Current medication guides are of little value to patients, as they are too complex and difficult to understand especially for individuals with limited literacy. Explicit guidance is offered for improving these print materials.
The future of safety science is happening now and has the potential to improve patient outcomes through an evolving approach to benefit-risk assessment. Three building blocks for the future of safety science, cognitive and behavioral systems, medical assessment, and data science, individually and collaboratively advance and modernize the benefit-risk paradigm. Incorporating the patient perspective and patient experiences will help identify tools that are useful in real-world practice. Medical assessment teams will bring together the study of toxicity and toxicogenomics, biomarkers, and special populations to personalize the benefit-risk profile. Personalized benefit-risk profiles for patients will help improve outcomes. Data science and related quantitative sciences such as safety statistics, database integration, technology, and epidemiology will provide new approaches and tools for analysis of safety data as well as more rapid access to insights that benefit patients.
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