Literature Surveillance Reporting

The purpose of literature surveillance is to provide a tracking tool to efficiently monitor and manage new scientific and medical publications to help your team stay informed on the most relevant information related to a product. It provides an important source of information that advances scientific background and understanding, informs product positioning, detects safety data, enhances the efficiency of competitive analysis, and presents trends of focus in studies related to a product.

The literature surveillance process begins with identifying key terms related to a product and creating a custom list of search terms. These specific search terms are used to simplify and conduct daily literature screening in the NIH database. The abstracts that are captured from the surveillance are reviewed and abstracts of interest are selected to be included in a literature report. Studies that evaluate the efficacy or safety of the product, studies with a unique patient population, case reports, and letters to the editor are usually included as abstracts of interest.

The literature report consists of 3 parts: the abstracts of interest, summaries of the abstracts, and a table with the number of publications for each search term for the designated reporting period. The literature report is put together biweekly and sent out to the team.