Time To Assess Pharma Progress In Data Sharing

"Today is a good day to celebrate and assess the progress in open science that is being lead by the pharmaceutical industry. I am at Datapalooza, the Health and Human Services conference focused on liberating health data. I will be speaking to researchers about the actions that have been taken by pharmaceutical companies that have committed to sharing data. In my view, when a group of companies comes together and commits to actions that will serve the common good, then they should get a reputational boost. Almost a year ago, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America publicly announced the commitment of their member companies to share clinical trial data and results. The commitment was to begin the effort by the beginning of this year. We can now look at what has been accomplished in the first 5 months. The impetus for these efforts came from many different sectors, including industry, medical journals, scientists, and the public. As a disclosure, we are working with Janssen, the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson and Johnson, to release their clinical trial assets – and they have given us authority to determine how and what is released among the assets that they control. It turns out that all the major companies have done something in this regard – though there is variation among them. Our team has constructed a table, based on what is available online, that describes what each of the top 12 market cap pharma companies are doing and have provided a more comprehensive description in a paper in Circulation: Quality of Care and Outcomes Research that we are publishing today. I do not wish to convey that we are anywhere near the end of this journey. I am not naïve to the complicated issues that abound ..."