Call for evidence

This call for written evidence opened on Monday 27 July 2015 and closed on Monday 21 September 2015. If you would still like to respond, please contact the secretariat.

Over the past few years, questions have been raised in both the general and scientific media about the evidence underlying decisions about treatment options (for example the use of statins and Tamiflu). The validity of the different ways of collecting and analysing evidence has been part of this debate. But a wider discussion of issues such as overmedicalisation (or the reliance on prescribing drugs over lifestyle changes) and conflicts of interest in the way that evidence collection is funded and/or analysed has led to wider questions surrounding trust in academic researchers, clinicians, the media and the pharmaceutical industry.

To explore these issues further, the Academy of Medical Sciences is undertaking a project to examine how society uses evidence to judge the risks and benefits of medicinal products, chaired by our President, Professor Sir John Tooke PMedSci. This is an independent project that has the support of the Chief Medical Officer. The British Heart Foundation (through a Strategic Funding Award), the National Institute of Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programme, the Medical Research Council and the British Pharmacological Society have kindly provided financial contributions towards this work.

The workstream will consider elements relating to: the strengths and limitations of different sources of evidence used to evaluate the risks and benefits of medicinal products; the ways in which conflicts of interest impact on the validity (or perception of validity) of evidence; the communication of evidence to support informed decision-making; and the perceptions and perspectives of society on scientific evidence (including in the context of shared decision making between patients and their clinicians). The project will not seek to replicate the work performed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. 

The remit of this project requires expertise from outside of the Academy and we therefore launched a call for evidence as part of our process of gathering external input. 

The call for evidence is now closed, however we are still accpeting late submissions. If you would still like to respond, please contact the secretariat. The call for evidence questions are available to download from the right hand side of this page as a Word document to complete.