The FDA announced an interesting initiative yesterday indicating that the agency is
getting very serious about providing accurate and – more importantly – timely information to consumers using the Internet. FDA has launched a partnership with WebMD that will enable it to distribute information and collect consumer feedback via the popular Website. According to an agency press release, the new FDA WebMD partnership will involve:
- The development of a new online consumer health information resource on WebMD.
- A new platform where consumers can submit safety information about food and drugs directly to the agency.
This is encouraging news and I expect the agency to annouce more initiatives in 2009. Given FDA's interest in improving its pharmacovigilance efforts, I think we may see some interesting projects focusing on mining online information -- including search traffic -- to highlight emerging food and drug saftey issues.
To learn more about the FDA/WebMD project, please click here.
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