A new CauseHealth Risk and Safety publication, Pharmacovigilance as Scientific Discovery: an Argument for Trans-Disciplinarity, argue that inter-disciplinarity is necessary, if we want to promote serendipitous discoveries of advers drug reactions.
The article starts from the premise that Pharmacovigilance is an explorative enterprise, based  on serendipitous discoveries of untargeted effects of  drugs. How, however, do serendipitous discoveries happen, and how can they be promoted? Latest developments in philosophy of science point out that serendipity in science needs ‘chance’ and ‘a prepared mind’, but not only. It needs also a responsive network of scientists and stakeholders, able to take up the unexpected observations and make use of them.
Recent action and suggestions for renewal in pharmacovigilance can potentially facilitate the detection of the unexpected. However, we argue, more groundwork at the very structure of the medical community is still needed, to create a stable but flexible problem-centered and trans-disciplinary network in pharmacovigilance.

Published by CauseHealth Risk and Safety

This is a collaborative research project between Uppsala Monitoring Centre for International Drug Monitoring and the NMBU Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science.