Opinion Mining and Sentiment Analysis of Online Drug Reviews as a Pharmacovigilance Technique

Abstract

Pharmacovigilance is the science that focuses on identification and characterization of adverse effects of medications in populations when released to market. The focus of this paper is to study the prospects of exploiting drug related online reviews contributed by social media groups for finding the adverse effects of drugs using opinion mining and sentiment analysis. The experiences and opinions related to drug adverse reactions by patients or other contributors in these forums can be mined and analyzed as a facilitator for pharmacovigilance. This review paper highlights the usability of opinion mining and sentiment analysis as one of the approaches for pharmacovigilance.
DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.1507115