Resources for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

FDA and Health Insurers Take On Drugmakers

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The U.S. has fairly rigorous standards for approving drugs, but its ability to find side effects after drugs are on the market is kind of laughable. Essentially, the agency has to count on having doctors voluntarily report side effects to catch ones that make it through clinical trials unnoticed. These side effects often go unreported because it's not clear that they're even side effects of one of the medications the patient is taking.

But not anymore. The FDA is teaming up with health insurer WellPoint (NYSE: WLP) to use the company's vast database of 35 million members' medical records to try teasing out the real side effects from all the unrelated ones. Wellpoint's Safety Sentinel System would have been more aptly named Safety Ordinal System (SOS) -- since it's certainly coming to the FDA's rescue.

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