Patients and public deserve changes in evaluation of drugs
The drug industry has an image problem, and big changes are needed to restore public confidence. The reasons why it has got itself a bad name are well rehearsed. They include research agendas distorted by priorities that are important to industry but not to patients; inappropriately restricted study populations that exclude patients with multiple health problems and children; uninformative trial designs that fail to assess whether new drugs are better than existing treatment options; outcome measures that ignore the effects