The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched a new initiative to make it easier for researchers, web developers, and others to access and build interactive tools based the FDA’s Adverse Events Reporting System data.
The openFDA (http://open.FDA.gov) initiative is part of a larger effort to make Department of Health and Human Services data more accessible. Currently, the adverse event reports are publicly available (with identifying data excluded). Accessing the data, however, requires a time-consuming Freedom of Information Act request. In addition, the FDA typically provides the information in a report that may not be easy to use.