Stakeholders and their perspectives

The most important stakeholders in pharmacovigilance are patients who use medicines - this is, after all, why the discipline exists. Health professionals are also users of the medicines they prescribe and both probably have similar expectations of the process. Broadly speaking, users of medicines expect them to have been adequately tested, to be safe in the sense that serious harms are unlikely to occur and to be provided with appropriate and understandable 

In terms of trying to prevent unnecessary drug safety scares, it is worth bearing in mind recognised fright factors - these are aspects of a particular risk that will tend to make most people more risk-averse. In particular, we tend to be more frightened by risks which are  

AU the parties mentioned above are stakeholders in the process of pharmacovigilance, but with the exception of industry and regulators they are mostly involved when a problem has already occurred. Generally, only industry personnel, regulator and individual users (i.e. patients/health professionals) between them have the potential to prevent some specific problems occurring - the ultimate purpose of the process. Other stakeholders may influence 

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