The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7469 p280
15 September 2007

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

MHRA announces new strategy to raise awareness of yellow cards

Reporting of adverse drugs effects by health care professionals and patients is to be strengthened by a new strategy from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

The strategy involves raising awareness of the yellow card reporting scheme and how valuable the data are. In particular, information will be targeted at older patients, pharmacists and patient support groups.

Speaking at the BPC, Sarah Davies from the MHRA explained that a key element of the strategy is a redesign of the electronic reporting form on the MHRA website, to make it more user-friendly for both patients and health care professionals.

She explained that the new form will be “intelligent”, so the format will change depending on what the user is putting in. Other features will include mandatory fields to ensure complete reports and a system for immediate feedback to the user. Ms Davies said that the MHRA is also hoping for a link to the scheme from health care professionals’ software systems.

A prototype of the new form was exhibited at the conference to enable participants to give their comments. Ms Davies said the MHRA wants patient reporting to become a more established part of the yellow card scheme — a MORI poll last year showed that only 1 per cent of patients was aware of the scheme.

Turning to reporting by health care professionals, she said that pharmacists are extremely well placed to provide information on adverse events, particularly those caused by drugs involved in POM to P switches, over-the-counter medicines and herbal remedies.