ArticleDrug safety2024
Using Social Media as a Source of Real-World Data for Pharmaceutical Drug Development and Regulatory Decision Making.
Article in Drug safety, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Assessing Efgartigimod (VYVGART™) Social Media Posts in Generalized Myasthenia Gravis to Understand Patient, Caregiver, and Health Care Professional Sentiments.Neurology and therapy · 2026Article
- Augmenting fact and date of death in electronic health records using internet media sources: a validation study from two large healthcare systems.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- A Review of the Importance and Relevance of Real-World Data and Real-World Evidence.Medical science monitor : international medical journal of experimental and clinical research · 2025Review
- Review of Challenges in Performing Real-World Evidence Studies for Nonprescription Products.Pragmatic and observational research · 2025Review
- Measuring the multidimensional reputation of a medicines regulatory agency: development and validation of a public-oriented scale.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionWhile pharmaceutical companies aim to leverage real-world data (RWD) to bridge the gap between clinical drug development and real-world patient outcomes, extant research has mainly focused on the use of social media in a post-approval safety-surveillance setting. Recent regulatory and technological developments indicate that social media may serve as a rich source to expand the evidence base to pre-approval and drug development activities. However, use cases related to drug development have been largely omitted, thereby missing some of the benefits of RWD. In addition, an applied end-to-end understanding of RWD rooted in both industry and regulations is lacking.
objectiveWe aimed to investigate how social media can be used as a source of RWD to support regulatory decision making and drug development in the pharmaceutical industry. We aimed to specifically explore the data pipeline and examine how social-media derived RWD can align with regulatory guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration and industry needs.
methodsA machine learning pipeline was developed to extract patient insights related to anticoagulants from X (Twitter) data. These findings were then analysed from an industry perspective, and complemented by interviews with professionals from a pharmaceutical company.
resultsThe analysis reveals several use cases where RWD derived from social media can be beneficial, particularly in generating hypotheses around patient and therapeutic area needs. We also note certain limitations of social media data, particularly around inferring causality.
conclusionsSocial media display considerable potential as a source of RWD for guiding efforts in pharmaceutical drug development and pre-approval settings. Although further regulatory guidance on the use of social media for RWD is needed to encourage its use, regulatory and technological developments are suggested to warrant at least exploratory uses for drug development.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.