The primary goal of drug safety, or pharmacovigilance, is the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other drug-related problems. Today there is more nuance to the drug safety processes than in the early years of pharmacovigilance in the 1960s, thanks to the more detailed legislation and more set guidelines. The pharmaceutical industry has now decades of experience with adverse event reporting. There is more historical data that can be used to reflect the new findings.