Understanding Underreporting of Adverse Drug Reactions in the Philippines: A Mixed Methods Study
Published open access in Drugs – Real World Outcomes, 12(3): 367–381 (Springer, Adis), 2025. The mixed-methods design combined a knowledge, attitudes and practices survey of 4,364 healthcare professionals, a usability evaluation of the national online reporting system, and focus group discussions with clinicians.
The eleven authors include staff of the Philippine FDA’s National Pharmacovigilance Center and the School of Pharmacy at Philippine Women’s University. Ethics approval was obtained from the WHO/TDR Research Ethics Review Committee and the Philippine Women’s University ethics board, and FDA-employed authors were kept out of running the focus groups.
How Evidano fit the workflow
- 1Capture
Focus group discussions with 11 healthcare professionals (pharmacists, nurses, physicians) were recorded and transcribed. Each session ran about 60 minutes, and groups continued until data saturation.
- 2Analyze
The team ran a thematic analysis using open, semantic, and latent coding. Evidano was used to manage and analyze the transcript data.
- 3Validate
Outputs were cross-checked manually. Two independent researchers compared findings and resolved differences to support inter-rater reliability.
- 4Publish
The validated themes, grouped into five categories (knowledge, attitude, practice, barriers, strategies), were reported in a peer-reviewed journal in 2025.
“For data analysis, AILYZE Lite—an online tool for qualitative data analysis—was used.”
“...its use was justified in this study owing to its ability to efficiently manage and analyze a large volume of text data while remaining user-friendly for the research team.”
“The tool's output was cross-checked manually by the researchers, and the results were validated by comparing them with the initial coding and through manual verification. This ensured the credibility and accuracy of the findings.”
The authors describe Evidano as able to efficiently manage and analyze a large volume of text data.
In the study, Evidano outputs stayed human-reviewable: cross-checked and validated against the team’s own coding by two independent researchers.
Evidano was named directly in the data analysis section, supporting a clear, reproducible methods write-up.
Approved by the WHO/TDR Research Ethics Review Committee and a university ethics board.