GlaxoSmithKline Japan has selected SciBite’s Semantic Platform, TERMite, to enhance pharmacovigilance capabilities. TERMite, a semantic named entity recognition (NER) and extraction engine, is currently being implemented to reduce the duration and enhance the certainty involved in evaluating the vast body of English language research produced worldwide for potential safety information.  

GSK made use of SciBite’s TERMite Expressions (TExpress) module to search for phrases within texts suggestive of pharmacovigilance events. TExpress patterns were grouped together into subject-specific sets enabling the software to annotate sentences with category labels based on the phrases and keywords used. Following the annotation process, a bespoke novel ranking algorithm was employed to determine the overall importance of each article to GSK pharmacovigilance activities in Japan. The result of this Proof of Concept was a faster processing period, providing accurate identification of all articles requiring reporting.

“SciBite is absolutely committed to our Japanese clients and is extremely pleased to welcome GSK Japan to our international group of customers,” said Rob Greenwood, chief executive officer, SciBite. “Our highly flexible technologies are proven by life science companies the world over to offer new, innovative opportunities to change the way they achieve their pharmacovigilance activities. We look forward to seeing how GSK Japan combine our market-leading technology and their internal human-centric expertise to evolve their pharmacovigilance capabilities.”