Covid-19 vaccination campaign safety : France rolls out the "Medication Shield" of Synapse Medicine

BORDEAUX, France, Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Synapse Medicine, which was founded by public health physicians, rolls out its Medication Shield technology to increase the safety of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in France, in collaboration with the regional pharmacovigilance centers (CRPVs) and the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety (ANSM). This technology comes out as a valuable time-saver, supporting the management of adverse drug reaction (ADR) reports by making it easier and allowing pharmacovigilance teams to focus their attention on the most severe cases. Because COVID-19 vaccines were developed in a brief period of time, it is crucial to ensure rigor and responsiveness in monitoring any possible side-effects.

The Medication Shield: a unique technology to improve adverse drug events monitoring 

In France, monitoring the safety of drugs, particularly vaccines, is carried out by the ANSM and the CRPVs. Synapse Medicine has been working in collaboration with these health institutions for the past 18 months on a research project aiming to support the management of pharmacovigilance cases. This technology, called "Medication Shield", manages ADR reports in real-time (declared on the online reporting portal by the general public), encodes them automatically into an international classification (MedDRA), and ranks them by severity. The ANSM has chosen to deploy the Medication Shield on a national level in response to the current context, which requires reinforced pharmacovigilance and important responsiveness regarding COVID-19 vaccines. This technology allows monitoring teams from the ANSM and the CRPVs to analyze ADR reports more rapidly, depending on their severity.

Artificial Intelligence to improve the pharmacovigilance of the COVID-19 vaccines

The COVID-19 vaccines were brought to the public quickly thanks to innovative development processes. This requires official health authorities to strengthen their protection systems against medication risks and to rapidly deploy increased pharmacovigilance systems.

"The Medication Shield acts as a collective shield. It allows pharmacovigilance experts, physicians, and pharmacists to save time during the management of ADR reports and focus their attention on the most severe cases.  The major challenge here is to monitor any unexpected events following the COVID-19 vaccination in real-time , and more broadly following the use of any medication," comments Dr. Clément Goehrs, co-founder and CEO of Synapse Medicine.

About Synapse Medicine

Synapse Medicine's (https://synapse-medicine.com) mission is to provide access to reliable and useful drug information. The start-up, which collaborates with some of the most significant French University Hospitals, has developed a Medication Intelligence platform dedicated to improve medication use. A reference in its category, its solution is 100% independent and is now used by thousands of healthcare professionals and patients.

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