If you happen to be a bit of an online treasure hunter, well, you're in luck. The FDA has just

unveiled a brand new platform for tracking side effects. You see, if in the last several decades

you wanted to go online and dive into the side effect data that's been reported to the FDA,

you would have been met with a labyrinth of different systems. You had theirs, the vaccine

adverse end reporting system

for vaccine side effects. There was fares, the FDA adverse event reporting system for drugs,

cosmetics, food colorings, and so on. There was Ayers, the adverse event reporting system,

which was specifically for animal drugs and animal foods, there was Maud,

the manufacturer and user facility device experience system for medical devices, and then there

were two others, one for human food and another for tobacco-related products. However, according to

the new leadership over at the FDA, this setup was both outdated as well as

too convoluted.

Here is specifically what the new FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty McCari, said on this particular

matter.

Quote, the FDA's previous adverse event reporting systems were outdated and fragmented and made

important data difficult to access.

These clunky systems also wasted millions

of taxpayer dollars and created blind spots in our postmarket surveillance of products ranging

from drugs and vaccines to cosmetics. We're fixing the problem through a major modernization

initiative. Starting today, the FDA will have a single, intuitive, adverse event platform

that will better serve

agency scientists, researchers, and the public. He went on to say that on top of being

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