Eight Steps to More Productive Observational Studies

From inVentiv Health.

The automobile industry is in a precarious state. With factories designed to churn out light trucks, SUVs and other as-guzzlers, the industry has been ill-prepared for the shift toward energy-efficient vehicles. Whether its denial or archaic thinking or lack of responsiveness or inflexible factory design it’s pretty clear that Detroit (and even Tokyo) has encountered a perfect storm certainly exacerbated by a global economic meltdown, but one nonetheless largely on their own making.

Is this an allegory for the pharmaceutical industry? Perhaps. I’ll limit the metaphor, however, to the subject of research studies, and specifically to observational, non-interventional studies. Suffice it to say that our industry needs to retool in order to cost-effectively respond to the need for these unique types of studies. Analogous to producing an SUV when a Smart Car is what’s really needed, while observational studies may be able to utilize
certain standard parts from the research process assembly line, a fundamentally different perspective is required overall to respond to what the consumer really wants.

Download the paper here.