Using VigiBase to Identify Substandard Medicines: Detection Capacity and Key Prerequisites

Substandard medicines, whether the result of intentional manipulation or lack of compliance with good manufacturing practice (GMP) or good distribution practice (GDP), pose a significant potential threat to patient safety. Spontaneous adverse drug reaction reporting systems can contribute to identification of quality problems that cause unwanted and/or harmful effects, and to identification of clusters of lack of efficacy. In 2011, the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) constructed a novel algorithm to identify reporting patterns suggestive of substandard medicines in spontaneous reporting, and applied it to VigiBase(®), the World Health Organization's global individual case safety report database. The algorithm identified some historical clusters related to substandard products, which were later able to be confirmed in the literature or by contact with national centres (NCs). As relevant and detailed information is often lacking in the VigiBase reports but might be available at the reporting NC, further evaluation of the algorithm was undertaken with involvement from NCs.