The reform of regulation is proposed to implement the Pharmacovigilance Planning (PVP) based on the ICH E2E guidelines as indicated in the notification of Risk Management Plan (J-RMP). Even after the J-RMP is enforced, the pharmacovigilance method still heavily depends on the traditional methods like “drug use results surveys”. The “Good Post-marketing Study Practice (GPSP)” ordinance and related notifications are the root causes of the malfunctioned operation of the system. Specifically, 1) the GPSP ordinance does not encourage the investigations according to the ICH E2E notification and 2) it is believed that the pharmacovigilance method should be limited to one of the three options only, namely, “drug use results surveys”, “specific use surveys” and “post-marketing clinical studies”. The followings are proposed:
• The GPSP ordinance should be revised to encourage referring the annex “pharmacovigilance methods” in “Pharmacovigilance planning”.
• The use of the early post-marketing phase vigilance (EPPV) should be restricted to the drugs marketed at the same time in the world or marketed for the first time in Japan.
• The notification connecting the “Good Vigilance Practice (GVP)” and GPSP ordinances (March 11, 2013, No 0311-7) should be revised to include a prescription that the “Safety Control Manager encourage the Post-marketing Surveillance Control Manager to develop a pharmacovigilance plan according to the ICH-E2E guidelines”.
• Forms attached to the individual RMP submissions should be revised according to the J-RMP notification.
• The notification on the RMP development (No.0426-1 and No.0426-2, on April 26, 2012) should be revised to indicate that the study design is acceptable to the health professionals.
• It should be clarified that the additional pharmacovigilance activities may be conducted by the divisional cooperation in the world or may be conducted as a non-clinical study, if appropriate.

Over 40 years, Post-maketing surveillance (PMS) studies have been conducted as a legal obligation in Japan. Though the contribution of these studies to the better use of the drug has been acknowledged, there are criticisms that these PMS studies have been stereotyped and need to be improved. The ICH-E2E guideline entitled as "Pharmcovigilance Planning", agreed in the International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) has been implemented in the concerned countries. The legislation of the guideline in Japan in 2005 seems to have urged drug companies and regulatory agency to review the current PMS practices in contrast with the today's highest scientific standard. We investigated the theoretical and practical aspects of pharmacoepidemiology required when the drug company evaluates safety specification prior to developing the pharmacovigilance plan and designs a PMS study along the lines stipulated in the ICH-E2E guideline. To meet this end, we evaluated the profiles of the drug, summarized "Important identified risks", "Important potential risks" and "Important missing information" to be identified and examined the pharmacovigilance plan suggested by the regulatory agency and that proposed and implemented by the drug company. We examined those aspects for 6 new products selected from 168 drugs newly approved during the period between January 2004 and October 2006. In 5 of 6 cases, we judged that the use of a comparator group would have been appropriate to asses the association between the drug and adverse events of interest. In addition, in one half (3) of 6 cases, it would have been preferable to use the database for the patient registration and/or other types of databases. The issues of relevant legislation and the infrastructure and funding for the investigations needed to develop a desirable study design and conduct a good pharmacoepidemiology study are however beyond a single company's capacity and should be set as a national strategy. The issues of post-marketing safety in the nation is becoming more and more important as the data in the countries outside Japan are being used more often for the processes of marketing authorization application of a new drug and its approval. It is urgent to secure the practice of pharmacoepidemiology to achieve the effective post-approval pharmacovigilance studies.

In the EU, signal management guideline is defined as GVP Module Ⅸ “Signal Management”, where the signal management is defined as a set of activities performed to determine whether, based on an examination individual case safety reports (ICSRs), aggregated data from active surveillance systems or studies, scientific literature information or other data sources, there are new risks associated with an active substance or a medicinal product or whether known risks have changed, as well as any related recommendations, decisions, communications and tracking. The EU signal management process includes the following activities : signal detection, signal validation, signal confirmation, signal analysis and prioritisation, signal assessment and recommendation for action.WHO and FDA have also published similar guidance in various documents. Furthermore, the social medial has become another source of signal. It is also very important to review preapproval clinical trial data. This is because, in recent years, there are increased number of drugs with a major problem due to cardiovascular risk or suicide, but such signals often appeared in clinical trial data.Traditional qualitative signal detection method is fundamental to signal detection. However, for regulators that have to monitor all drugs, statistical signal detection and its prioritization are indispensable and various methods have been implemented. For pharmaceutical companies, the need for prioritization itself is small, but the concept is very helpful in the planning of subsequent measures.In signal evaluation, post-authorization safety study in EU and postmarketing requirement in FDA are very important. For regulatory notification of recommended actions, one should consider signal prioritization elements.In Japan, the routine pharmacovigilance activities sufficient within the scope of local GVP as the enforcement regulations of the PMR Law. But for future routine pharmacovigilance activities, we must work on signal detection and evaluation of signals which are difficult to detect including cardiovascular risk, suicide, and carcinogenesis.

Objective: To propose the best pharmacovigilance plan in Japan by comparing post marketing safety studies in Japan and the U.S.
Method: Among all of the newly approved medicines in Japan in 2010, 12 marketed products in the U. S. are selected. First, to examine the U. S. system, post-marketing safety concerns over those drugs at the time of approval in the U. S. were collected as well as its postmarketing requirements (PMR) which are studies or clinical trials that sponsors are required to conduct under one or more statutes of regulations. Then, the same drugsʼ safety issues discussed as special cautions listed during the approval process in Japan and the corresponding postmarketing safety studies were reviewed.
Result: Both countries have many safety concerns in common, however, in Japan, ongoing studies are only conventional studies, such as post-marketing surveillance studies or all-cases studies, while the U. S. conducts studies to meet each individual requirement need. Ideal post-marketing safety study designs proposed by the task force, seemed beyond sponsors capabilities, particularly with regard to conduct studies with control group, and require involvement of academia external research organizations, or establishment of the national registry system for cancer and other major diseases.
Conclusion: In Japan, Risk Management Plan (RMP) will soon be implemented in 2013, and that is expected to secure patientsʼ safety by the scientific pharmacovigilance plan with the international standard. It is an urgent task to discuss what plan is feasible in Japan and how to make the corporation of industry-government-academia a reality. (Jpn J Pharmacoepidemiol 2012; 17 (1): 55-66)

A Task Force team consisting of members from pharmaceutical companies --a central player to develop and implement RMP (Risk Management Plan)-- as well as health care professionals and members from academia was established in JSPE. The Task Force developed guidance for scientific approach to practical and ICH-E2E-compliant Pharmacovigilance Plan (PVP) stated in Japanese Risk Management Plan issued in April 2012 by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The guidance contains the following topics.
1．Introduction: JSPE's activities and this task force's objectives for pharmacovigilance activities
2．How to select Safety Specification (SS) and describe its characteristics
・Selection of SS
・Characterization of SS
・Association with Research Questions (RQ)
3．How to define and describe RQ
・What is RQ ?
・RQ interpretation in other relevant guidelines
・Methodology to develop RQ for PVP with examples
・Best approach to integrating PVP for whole aspects of safety concern
4．How to optimize PVP for specific RQ
・Routine PVP or additional PVP ?
・Additional PVP design (RQ and study design, RQ structured with PICO or GPP's research objectives, specific aims, and rationale)
・Checklist to help develop PVP
5．Epilogue:
・What can/should be “Drug use investigation” in the context of ICH-E2E-compliant PVP.
・Significance of background incidence rate and needs for comparator group
・Infrastructure for the future PVP activities
6．Appendix: Checklist to help develop PVP activities in RMP
The task force team is hoping that this guidance help develop and conduct SS and PVP in accordance with ICH E2E, as stated in Japanese Risk Management Plan Guideline.

The Standardized Structured Medical record Information eXchange (SS-MIX) was started in 2006 as the project supported by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) for promoting the exchange of the standardized medical information. Free soft wares developed in the project allow the storage of medical information to receive HL7 messages for prescription, laboratory test results, diagnoses and patient demographics in the hospital information system (HIS). We encourage the use of the SS-MIX standardized storage for postmarketing surveys and clinical studies. The recommendations consist of the following 7 parts. [1] In surveys and clinical studies, the information of drugs and laboratory test results in the SS-MIX standardized storage can be directly transferred to the electronic questionnaire and the investigators may obtain the information with high accuracy and granularity. [2] The SS-MIX standardized storage works as the backup system for the HIS because it can provide the minimum information essential in patient care even under the disastrous condition like earthquake or unexpected network failure. [3] The SS-MIX standardized storage may be useful to conduct a good pharmacoepidemiology study not only because it provides the information in the storage efficiently but also it can be used to identify “new users” who started the drug after some period of non-use.The “new user” design is often essential to have the unbiased results. [4] When the drug company conducts postmarketing surveys according to the current regulation, the use of the SS-MIX standardized storage will facilitate the fast and efficient collection of data to develop the timely measure to minimize the drug-related risk. With the SS-MIX standardized storage, it is also expected that many types of study design can be employed and the quality of data is improved in the survey. [5] The SS-MIX standardized storage maybe also useful to evaluate the risk minimization action plan by comparing the prescription pattern or incidence of the targeted adverse event between two periods before and after the implementation of the action plan. [6] In planning clinical trials, the SS-MIX standardized storage may be used to estimate the size of eligible patients. The storage may also allow conducting cross-sectional studies to know characteristics of diseases or drug treatment. In addition, cohorts of those who had coronary artery angiography, new users of a drug and those with a rare disease may be readily identified. Using such cohorts, investigators can initiate a case-control study nested within the cohort, pharmacogenomic studies and comparative effectiveness researches. [7] The SS-MIX standardized storage may be used as the formal data source in clinical trials in the future when some conditions are satisfied. For instance, the formal agreement should be reached between industry, government and academia on the use of standards of data structure in Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) and on the operation of computerized system validation (CSV) in the clinical trials.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to create a checklist that summarizes checkpoints that should be noted when using the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report database (JADER). After we created the checklist, we then used it to survey published academic papers that used JADER.Method: First, we created a draft checklist for research that uses JADER by citing the report of CIOMS working group VIII “Practical Aspects of Signal Detection in Pharmacovigilance”. Then, we conducted a pilot test and revised the draft checklist. Finally, the checklist was completed after the review by a pharmacoepidemiology expert. The checklist was applied to published academic papers that used JADER, and the fulfill rate of each checkpoints was calculated.Results: A “checklist of important points to be noted during research that uses the data mining method in JADER (mainly signal detection by disproportionality analysis)” was created. We also revealed problems with published academic papers that used JADER. For example, some researchers were thought to be inappropriately using JADER as a source of their research while others used an inappropriate version of MedDRA.Conclusion: The checklist created in this study summarizes key points that could be noted in research that uses JADER and is thought to contribute to an improvement in quality of research that uses JADER. Additionally, in our investigation of published academic papers that used JADER, we found the possibility that both the role of signal detection and the impact on analysis of JADER using the updated MedDRA version are not well understood.