Comparative Effectiveness Research and Prescription Drugs

In promoting medicines to physicians and others who prescribe medicines, pharmaceutical businesses have been known to obscure research that might undermine their promotional efforts and to highlight findings that do not meeting the highest standards of research.

Academic detailing attempts to address these problems with strict adherence to high standard of scientific research as a basis of education of physicians. To develop information on a therapeutic class of medicines to provide physicians and others who prescribe, academic detailing relies on systematic review of research on that class conducted by researchers who do not have conflicts of interest in the outcome of the review. Successful efforts along these lines will be described. In that some pharmaceutical businesses not only provide questionable information through detailers, but in that they also have actively opposed academic detailing, work to overcome industry opposition will be discussed.