Innovative approaches to collecting, aggregating, and analyzing adverse drug events in smart hospitals

BACKGROUND: The increasing integration of electronic health records (EHRs) and their secondary use provide new pathways to advance drug safety. Smart hospitals use advanced data collection to enhance pharmacovigilance and better detect adverse drug events (ADEs). Finland’s secondary-use legislation embodies this data-sharing shift. OBJECTIVE: This work synthesizes current evidence and proposes strategies to strengthen ADE detection and analysis in smart hospitals by integrating multimodal data sources, including EHRs, sensor data, and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), to raise overall drug safety standards. METHODS: We review the Global Trigger Tool (GTT), sensor technologies, and IoMT for ADE detection and outline how these techniques can be combined, offering a more comprehensive approach to monitoring. RESULTS: Integrating GTT, sensors, and IoMT into a unified system could improve ADE detection and prevention. Combining pharmacovigilance tools with advanced technology can increase the volume and quality of ADE data and supports a preventive focus on patient safety. CONCLUSIONS: The study underscores the importance of the smart-hospital concept and emerging data-collection methods in pharmacovigilance. By adopting a holistic approach to ADE detection and integrating diverse data sources, more robust drug-safety surveillance and patient care can be achieved when coupled with human oversight and regulatory compliance.