Drug companies have hijacked the research agenda and “a lot of drugs” in the market are produced by companies for whom the bottom-line is profit, said Prathap Tharyan, Director, South Asian Cochrane Network and Centre, Prof B V Moses and ICMR Centre for Evidence-Informed Healthcare, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore.
He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a workshop on "Evidence Informed Healthcare" organised by Father Muller Medial College (FMMC), the Medical Education Unit, FMMC and The South Asian Cochrane Network, in Mangalore on Friday.
Mr. Tharyan said there were flaws in the process (of developing the drugs) and drug companies actively promoted certain drugs because of profits.
Getting good research is not easy.
A doctor needs to know where he can find the best evidence-based information, to be able to diagnose quickly. It is in this context that "evidence-informed medicine" is relevant, he said.
The "evidence" has to be relevant to the context. For example, an American association may recommend use of a certain medicine but we may not need it here. Some other drug, more appropriate for the patient in this country, has to be found.
Giving an example, Mr Tharyan said that in the aftermath of the tsunami in Nagapattinam, the traumatised people, especially people from the fishing community, were told to talk about what they had undergone. This was called "single session mass debriefing", the same method that was used for people affected by the Vietnam War. However, with this method, the chances of trauma were found to be more. Instead, repeated sessions of supportive counselling was more effective.
He said, "community support and faith-based support is more important than psychiatrist's help.”
Doctors need reliable evidence to make decisions in their practice that will give the best possible results for the patients.
A single source of evidence that can help in making clinical decisions is the Cochrane Library (www.thecochranelibrary.com), said a press release issued by FMMC. There are 28,000 participants in the Cochrane Network (www.cochrane.org) providing evidence data and making it available quickly to doctors, patients and caregivers so that they can take informed decisions in healthcare.
The website says that its aim is that healthcare decision-making throughout the world is made informed by high-quality, timely research evidence.
"We do not accept commercial or conflicted funding – this is vital for us to generate authoritative and reliable information, produced by people who can work freely, unconstrained by commercial and financial interests,” it says.
