Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Patient safety

Ensuring the safety of our medicines and medical devices is critically important for the health and wellbeing of patients and the success of our business.

All medicines have potential risks as well as benefits, although not everyone who takes a medicine will experience side effects. It is important that we identify, evaluate and minimise safety concerns to ensure that the overall benefits of a medicine outweigh any risks.

We strive to serve patient interest by promptly detecting potential safety issues with our products and communicating with regulators so that appropriate decisions can be made and actions taken.

Product safety is assessed in clinical trials before a product can be approved for marketing. Sometimes adverse events (potential safety issues) occur after approval when a product is being used by large numbers of patients. We have policies and a governance framework in place to help us detect and act on any adverse events. We have a dedicated team of scientists and healthcare professionals across the world which monitors and communicates safety issues to regulatory authorities.

We are also investing in genetic research to help predict how individual patients respond to a medicine. In the future this will help healthcare providers prescribe safer and more effective medicines.

Read about our patient safety governance framework and how we collect and report safety data.