ADVANCE - Accelerated Development of Vaccine Benefit-Risk Collaboration in Europe

Start date: 01-10-2013

Duration: 60 months

Status: In progress

Project website: http://www.advance-vaccines.eu

People involved: Benus Becker, Zubair Afzal, Jan Kors

Description

ADVANCE aims to review, develop and test methods, data sources and procedures which should feed into an efficient and sustainable pan-European framework that can rapidly deliver quantitative data for the assessment of the benefits and risks of vaccines that are on the market. Such a framework will allow regulators and public health authorities to make fast, informed decisions regarding vaccination strategies, and help to maintain public confidence in vaccines, particularly when questions are raised in the media about the safety of specific vaccines.

Data on vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccination coverage and adverse reactions to vaccines exist in many places and diverse formats, such as electronic health records, disease surveillance systems, and other healthcare databases. We are developing dedicated terminologies and text-mining tools to extract vaccine-related information from these different sources.