Epidemiological surveillance of drug safety using cumulative sequential analysis in electronic healthcare data

Background: Methods for safety signal detection in electronic healthcare data analysing data sequentially are being developed to meet the limitations of spontaneous reporting systems.

Objectives: This study aims to provide an overview of the literature on sequential analysis of electronic healthcare data and describe the development and testing of a novel epidemiological surveillance system.

Methods: We searched Medline, Embase, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library applying similar in- and exclusion criteria as those of a previous systematic review. The proposed system consisted of repeated cohort studies and was tested in an emulated prospective setting. Two signal evaluations were performed with several sensitivity analyses and a target trial emulation.

Findings: In the literature, 11 studies analysed the data sequentially of which two applied traditional epidemiological methods. Epidemiological surveillance of several exposures and outcomes can be successfully conducted with the newly proposed sequential analysis of electronic healthcare data. Signal evaluation studies confirmed the results of the system.

Conclusions: Very few studies in the literature analysed data at multiple time points, although this seems to be a prerequisite for testing the methods in a realistic setting. We demonstrated the feasibility of a sequential surveillance system using electronic healthcare data.