Accessing social media information for pharmacovigilance: what are the ethical implications?

Recent history has seen advances in the technology available to the general public for communication purposes, and a significant increase in the use of the internet, in particular social media networks. To date, there are on average 330 million monthly active users of Twitter, and 2.07 billion monthly users of Facebook.1 These figures will likely increase as more and more people gain access to the internet and utilize such applications