Calming the pendulum

Regulators and drug developers have converged on the idea that enhancing and broadening patient engagement is a key to improving drug development and adjudicating controversies over benefit-risk decisions and the value of medicines.

While the idea of patient engagement dates back to AIDS activists in the 1980s, the current iteration emphasizes collaboration over confrontation, and is moving away from protest and toward quantifiable metrics and peer-reviewed social science methods. ...