Signal Detection Pipeline
See how pharmacovigilance works — walk through a real drug safety signal step by step, then run your own analysis. All math runs in your browser.
Worked Example: Metformin + Lactic Acidosis
Walk through the full signal detection pipeline step by step. All computation runs in your browser.
Step 1: Identify the Drug
Resolve metformin to its canonical identity via RxNorm
Drug: metformin
RxCUI: 6809 | Generic name: metformin hydrochloride
First, we need to know exactly which drug we're talking about. Drug names can be messy — brand names, generics, combinations, misspellings. gives us a canonical identity.
Look up a drug in FAERS
2x2 Contingency Table
Event (+)
No Event (-)
Drug (+)
No Drug (-)
Go beyond thresholds
Train a random forest on your contingency data. ML catches signals that PRR < 2.0 misses — like aortic aneurysm for fluoroquinolones.