On behalf of the University of Liverpool I would like to extend a welcome to the 17th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Pharmacovigilance (ISoP 2017), in Liverpool, United Kingdom in 2017. This event is intended to be an exceptional networking opportunity for the Pharmacovigilance community to meet and discuss basic issues and exciting innovations in our field.

These are exciting times for the science of pharmacovigilance.  The theme of the conference will capture innovations that are occurring in many domains, and focus on how they can bring about benefits for patients.

Spontaneous reporting systems remain the cornerstone of pharmacovigilance.  Specific innovations to improve reporting include patient reports, and electronic methods of reporting including the development of apps.  These electronic methods are likely to be facilitated by the likely rise in smartphone usage (estimated to be over 2.6 billion people by 2018) allowing the possibility to capture drug safety information in real-time.

There is also a growth in the use of social media and social networks, which allows further opportunities to identify drug safety issues directly from patients – this in itself leads to many challenges for healthcare professionals, industry and regulators, and will need to be accompanied by the development of analytical platforms for big data, including innovative data mining algorithms, underpinned by developments in regulation.

The conference programme will address the latest trends in pharmacovigilance and how they can be harnessed for patient benefit in the 21^st century and beyond.

A visit to Liverpool will not disappoint. The city’s waterfront is a designated World Heritage Site, bearing witness to the development of one of the world’s major trading centres in the 18th and 19th centuries. With one of the largest collections of museums and galleries in the UK, Liverpool’s culture and heritage are at the very heart of the city, driven by our people and our famously warm welcome. All of this helps to make Liverpool one of the friendliest and most unique cities in the world.