Freedom of Information request on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in our Yellow Card system, when it went live and the impact it has had on reporting and concomitant investigations. (FOI 22/494)
Published 1 June 2022
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FOI 22/494
18th March 2022
Dear
Thank you of your email dated 21st February where you requested information on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in our Yellow Card system, when it went live and the impact it has had on reporting and concomitant investigations.
The MHRA awarded the AI contract in September 2020 and this was subsequently deployed in December 2020.
The AI tool has helped us by reducing the amount of manual coding for each report, thereby saving resource in processing cases and ensuring they are rapidly available for scientific analysis. The tool is not used for assessment of data, but to help ensure that all the information provided in narrative text from the reporter is well captured to support analysis and is subject to robust quality assessment.
The MHRA are working in collaboration with partners in the health system to rapidly assess all available safety data in real time and communicate any emerging issues. To provide reassurance as to the ongoing benefit and risk assessment of available vaccines the MHRA publishes details of all suspected reactions reported in association with available COVID-19 vaccines, along with our assessment of the data, on a regular basis in our weekly report
I hope the information provided is helpful, but if you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of this response; and can be addressed to this email address.
Yours sincerely,
FOI Team,
Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines Division
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