For healthcare professionals in Australia, pharmacovigilance is a mix of centralized and decentralized processes. The pillar of these processes is the spontaneous report. In Australia, spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) may come from any source ranging from rural general practitioners, to urban hospital pharmacists, to patients themselves. Depending on the setting, these reports may go through thorough assessment and vetting (e.g., by a hospital ADR committee), or they may go through no such process. Heterogeneity is both a feature and a bug in this system. And this is a problem…
