Posted by Michael Wonder on 29 Jul 2017
Pharmaceutical companies’ policies on access to trial data, results, and methods: audit study
26 July 2017 - Goldacre et al. set out to identify the policies of major pharmaceutical companies on transparency of trials, to extract structured data detailing each companies’ commitments, and to assess concordance with ethical and professional guidance.
42 pharmaceutical companies participated in the structured audit.
Policies were highly variable. Of 23 companies eligible from the top 25 companies by revenue, 21 (91%) committed to register all trials and 22 (96%) committed to share summary results; however, policies commonly lacked timelines for disclosure, and trials on unlicensed medicines and off-label uses were only included in six (26%). 17 companies (74%) committed to share the summary results of past trials.
