EBM "Will Increase Drug Use:" ABPI

While the UK pharmaceutical industry fundamentally supports the rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of health care interventions, discussions on evidence-based medicine should focus on treatment costs and not just the easy target of the National Health Service medicines bill, says Trevor Jones, director-general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

He told the Conservative Medical Soc iety's annual symposium last week that nor should the agenda for EBM turn into discussions on cost-cutting. "Discussion on how the patient feels, thinks or what he/she expects are rarely a significant component of the conversation," said Dr Jones, "and I fear that unless we rebalance the debate we shall be releasing our patients from hospital quicker but sicker."

Good EBM is linked to good practice in terms of disease management, said Dr Jones, and many drug companies are skilled here. He was confident that, properly applied, disease management would provide benefits to the NHS, industry and patients (see also page 11). "I believe it likely that the use of EBM may result in an increase in the overall use of medicine, and why not, if this brings better results, better health care and better medicine?" he said. "It is time to say that unecessary controls on medicines frequently drive up NHS costs in other parts of the system."