COMPARATIVE-EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH AND ITS IMPACT ON MANAGING PHARMACEUTICALS

摘要

The concepts behind comparative-effectiveness research (CER) are not new. They have been utilized since the American Revolution; the Lititz Pharmacopoeia, a 32-page booklet published in Philadelphia in 1778, represented a "formulary of simple and yet efficacious remedies for use of the military hospital, belonging to the Army of the Federated States of America..."1 Based on limited knowledge of what was effective in the battlefield, and on a previous model published 22 years earlier, physicians maintained kits of basic medicines that could be helpful under these conditions.