The Tayside Medicines Monitoring Unit (MEMO): A record-linkage system for pharmacovigilance

Post marketing surveillance of drugs is important. The Medicines Monitoring Unit (MEMO) has developed an automated database based on record-linkage techniques to conduct post-marketing drug safety studies. MEMO has access to data for the 400,000 residents of Tayside, Scotland, which are all indexed by the Community Health Number (CHNo), a unique patient identifier. Dispensed prescribing records can be linked to hospitalization records, via the CHNo, to conduct drug utilization studies, case-control studies and cohort studies. Such studies are described and future developments in MEMO are also discussed.