The FDA Sentinel data mining system is still in the beginning stages and the explanation of how it works sounds interesting in the fact that it will be able to query and mine data to create an overall reference, but the article states they are not creating a data base, but more or less a data mining...
Recently the FDA announced it was going to use the Medicare data base in the effort to mine and help find adverse drug side effects as well as other pertinent data relative to the approval and warning process in place at the FDA. This is more than likely related to the latest technology updates...