Drug safety
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The rapid expansion of the Internet and computing power in recent years has opened up the possibility of using social media for pharmacovigilance. While this general concept has been proposed by many, central questions remain as to whether social media can provide earlier warnings for rare and serious events than traditional signal detection from spontaneous report data. ⋯ An efficient semi-automated approach to social media monitoring may provide earlier insights into certain adverse events. More work is needed to elaborate additional uses for social media data in pharmacovigilance and to determine how they can be applied by regulatory agencies.