title: Observational therapeutics: Scope, challenges, and organization.
abstract: The importance of Observational Therapeutics in the progress of medicine has been neglected in the current era of the hierarchal position imparted to Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) for new drug discovery and practice of evidence-based medicine. There is a need to reflect on the reason for many new drugs being withdrawn during post marketing surveillance. There are several examples in literature where drug-discovery has originated initially from keen clinical and / or laboratory observations. The roots of these discoveries have often been from observations made by practitioners of traditional medicine including Ayurveda. The present article draws attention to the scope and challenges for observational therapeutics. There is an urgent need for the meticulous planning for a systematic organization of developing observational therapeutics, with a full understanding of its strengths and limitations.
authors.affiliation: ICMR Advanced Centre for Reverse Pharmacology in Traditional Medicine, Medical Research Centre - Kasturba Health Society, Mumbai, India.
authors.forename: Rama
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vaidya