In an ideal world

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• Format Audio, Texts
• Target Audience Self-directed learning
• EBM Stage 0 - Why EBM?
• Duration <5 mins
• Difficulty Introductory

Key Concepts addressed

• 2-1a Comparison groups should be similar
• 2-1h Peoples' outcomes should be analyzed in their original groups
• 1-2e Comparisons are needed to identify treatment effects

Details

‘In an ideal world, wherever possible, we could be gathering anonymised outcome data and comparing this against medication history, making exceptions only for those who put their anxieties about privacy above the lives of others . . . In an ideal world, wherever a patient is given any treatment, and there is genuine uncertainty about which treatment is best, they would be simply and efficiently randomised to one treatment, and their progress monitored. In an ideal world, these notions would be so routinely embedded in our notion of what healthcare looks like that no patient would be bothered by it.’

Goldacre B. Pharmaco-epidemiology would be fascinating enough even if society didn’t manage it really really badly. The Guardian, 17 July 2010.

Read more in:  Do regulatory systems for testing treatments get it right?