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Safety System Pilot Online

The FDA announced that it has launched a pilot of what it hopes eventually will be a major rapid-response electronic safety-surveillance system. The “Mini-Sentinel” is the pilot run but is no small effort, according to the agency. It includes 17 data partners and covers 99 million people, 2.4 billion medical encounters, and the dispensing of 2.9 billion prescriptions. The database should allow researchers to get answers to drug-safety questions within weeks, not months. Initial data on the Mini-Sentinel program was presented at the International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology and Therapeutic Risk Management in mid-August.