Visual Analytics in Pharmacovigilance: A Scoping Review

Visual analytics combines computational analysis with interactive visual representations and may strengthen pharmacovigilance, but its use in drug safety research has not been systematically characterized. This scoping review mapped the extent, characteristics, and applications of visualization and visual analytics in pharmacovigilance and identified evidence gaps. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidance, we searched PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar from inception through April 2026. Two reviewers independently selected studies and extracted data, which were synthesized qualitatively using predefined frameworks covering pharmacovigilance activities, analytical methods, visual representations, and interaction capabilities. Sixty-seven studies met the eligibility criteria: 41 system design studies and 26 non-system studies. Of the designed systems, 29 were classified as visual analytics systems and 12 as interactive visualization systems. Signal management was the most frequently supported activity; plots and charts were the predominant visual representations; and selecting, filtering, and drilling were the most common interactions. Only 16 systems reported formal evaluations. Visual analytics has been applied across diverse pharmacovigilance activities, particularly signal management, but the field remains limited by incomplete end-to-end workflow support, restricted analytical transparency, limited integration of complementary evidence sources, and infrequent formal evaluation of designed systems.