Message for J-PEM from Professor WHW Inman, the founder of
the Drug Safety Research Unit, Southampton, England

Monday, January 11, 1999

I was first Director of the Drug Safety Research Unit which I founded at Southampton
University in 1981.It became the second of only two nation-wide monitoring schemes
currently working in that country.It was complementary to the 'yellow card' scheme which
I developed for the Committee on Safety of Medicines from 1964 to 1980.
PEM utilised the concept of 'Event-Monitoring' originally proposed by Prof. David Finney
in which doctors were asked to report all possible significant events, irrespective on
their opinion about causality.The level of co-operation was high and it was possible to
assemble groups of 10,000 or more patients in whom the pattern of post-treatment 'events'
could be studied. There are no reasons why similar schemes in which doctors' prescriptions
are used to identify patients could not be developed in other countries.
An important initiative has been taken in Japan by Prof. Kiyoshi Kubota, who was
responsible for pioneer work on the analysis of PEM data in the UK. It is known as J- PEM.
It is to be hoped that J-PEM can be developed to the same or an even greater level of
sophistication, thus providing an advanced method for safegurading the health of patients
using newly introduced drugs in Japan, as well as adding to knowledge of drug safety
internationally.

Botley, Southampton,Prof WHW Inman