Data security is critical to effective pharmacovigilance. Ensuring that the data captured is not corrupted or degraded is a vital aspect of making sure that the data is of the highest quality. Accurate and comprehensive data aids the running of more effective clinical trials and helps enable the early detection of adverse drug events. This is why, earlier this month, we announced our partnership with Proact, one of Europe’s leading cloud and data services providers, to subscribe to the company’s market-leading data security SIEM service to ensure the security and privacy features of our pharmacovigilance solution Reportum® are set to the highest possible standards.
Safeguarding all types of medical data is a significant global issue. In the US there were 111 million recorded cases of medical data security breaches in 2015 alone, according to the US Office of Civil Rights, with that figure likely rising last year. In the UK, a recent investigation by Pulse magazine showed that health record security breaches by the National Health Service were up 20%.
Indeed, data security is now consistently identified as a top enterprise risk and the vast number of cyber breaches makes it evident as to why. The 2017 Cyber Security Breaches Survey for UK business showed that 46% of all businesses identified at least one breach attack in the last year. This can detrimental to a business, resulting in reputational damage as well as substantial financial losses.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which aims to protect data throughout the EU, includes provisions to ensure that biotech and pharmaceutical companies are minimising the threat of cyber security breaches. Data held on databases, medical records, clinical trial questionnaires, screening and medical consent forms from next year will now need to be against GDPR requirements. This is particularly important as companies operating in the pharmaceutical market are prime targets for attack. Compromised personal data not only destroys the trust of patients in the companies that conduct trials and manage the collection of data on their marketed products buy can also be used to clone accounts and create false identities.
Furthermore, it is important for pharmaceutical companies to maintain a competitive advantage through securing their clinical data. A breach in information could be detrimental to a company’s intellectual property. Pharmaceutical companies spend a vast sum of money on drug research and development; therefore, any corruption of the results of their research and including the safety and efficacy data collected from patients could damage the veracity of the trial outputs.
At MyMeds&Me, we are helping to improve the quality and security of the data clients collect through our online platform, Reportum, to ensure outstanding levels of compliance, completeness and traceability. Our mission is to provide high-quality data, obtained at source, in order to help pharma companies manage better product quality and adverse reaction issues. It is vital that our data has the best protection from cyber crime, that threats are monitored continuously and acted upon promptly.
Given that our solution is used by some of the world’s largest pharma companies, it was important for us to find a security partner that could meet the expectations of multinational pharma companies. By partnering with Proact, a European leader in the data security field, our clients can be reassured that our platform has best-in-class security and that the data collated on it will be of the highest quality, to help them deliver medicines supported by data this is reliable and trustworthy.
