Pharmacovigilance (PV)
In Safety & pharmacovigilance
Also known as: drug safety
Pharmacovigilance is the science and practice of detecting, assessing, understanding, and preventing harm from medicines. It runs from first-in-human trials through the entire time a product is on the market. Trial safety reporting is one part of it; signal detection, periodic reports, and risk management are others.
Why it matters
Pharmacovigilance is one of the most portable careers in the field: the case-handling and coding skills are the same whether the product is a trial drug or a marketed medicine.
Example
A PV associate receives a report of an unexpected liver injury, enters it into the safety database, codes it with MedDRA, and checks whether the case meets the criteria for expedited reporting.
Related terms
Career paths that use this
Turn the vocabulary into a career
The free CRLN Career Finder maps your background to a clinical-research role and builds a step-by-step roadmap. No cost, no card.
Get your free roadmap →Educational reference only. Where regional rules differ, follow the regulation and the written procedures that apply where you work.