No medicine is absolutely safe, and all pose some magnitude of safety and health risks. Making sure that medicines are safe for their intended use is an ongoing process that starts in the developmental stage and continues long after medicines in the market. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes pharmacovigilance as the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other medicine-related problem.

This includes collection and evaluation of spontaneous case reports of suspected adverse events. PV is aimed to improve patient/public care and safety, assess the benefit, harm, effectiveness and risk of medicines & to the prevention of harm and maximization of benefit of medicines.