Yellow Card Scheme

The Yellow Card Scheme (YCS) is the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) system for collecting information on suspected Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) to medicines. It is run by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the branch of the UK’s Department of Health, which is responsible for the safety and efficacy of medicines, and the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM), the government’s independent scientific advisory body on medicines’ safety. Health care professionals and patients voluntarily report adverse drug reactions that they suspect are caused by a prescription medicine or an over-the-counter product, vaccine, or herbal remedy. By law, pharmaceutical companies holding marketing authorizations from the MHRA must report adverse effects including those they have identified through the literature within 14 days.

The YCS system was originally created ...