139: Examining #Pharmacovigilance in the Era of COVID-19: A Hashtag Analysis Study

Statement of Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic brought pharmacovigilance to the limelight through social media. Twitter, in particular, emerged as a popular platform for conversations surrounding this topic . However, there is a lack of literature exploring the use of the #Pharmacovigilance hashtag on Twitter. This study provides a comprehensive hashtag analysis on Twitter and highlights the potential benefits and limitations of this method in monitoring adverse events.

Description of Methods & Materials: Tweets with #Pharmacovigilance on Twitter were analyzed using the Symplur Signals hashtag analytics tool from December 1st, 2019 to November 22, 2022. The variables worked upon included the locations of tweets, co-occurring hashtags, prominent stakeholders and popular influencers of hashtags. A manual review of individual twitter handles was conducted to classify different types of accounts. The additional metrics included co-occurring hashtags, mentions of other accounts, links and geolocation trends.

Data & Results: This analysis yielded total 105,264 tweets generating a cumulative 141,315,532 (~14 Million) impressions (views) of #Pharmacovigilance. The top 3 co-occurring hashtags with #pharmacovigilance were #COVID19 (25,852 counts), #vaccination (23,623 counts), and #pfizer (with 18,133 counts) in descending order. The relevant trending terms with #pharmacovigilance were ‘drug safety’, ‘safety signal management’, ‘signal detection’, ‘harm reduction’ and ‘patients’. The top five countries and the influencer accounts tweeting #pharmacovigilance originated from France, the US, the UK, India and Canada. Additionally, the top five stakeholders who posted about #pharmacovigilance were- Other Healthcare Organization, Other Individual Health, Non-Health Organization, Doctor and advocacy Organization.

Interpretation, Conclusion or Significance: This study concludes that #pharmacovigilance is an impactful hashtag in the drug safety community. Our study highlights how pharmacovigilance is a popular topic among healthcare professionals on Twitter. Our findings showed that it has a global impact amongst different organizations using the hashtag. By leveraging social media platforms like Twitter for pharmacovigilance, we can increase public awareness about using social media for pharmacovigilance education/research and promote drug safety.

Disclosures: None