title: The most transformative drugs of the past 25 years: a survey of physicians.
abstract: Strategic and legislative efforts to catalyse pharmaceutical innovation may be hampered by a lack of consensus over what characterizes an innovative drug. To help clarify this issue, we conducted an extensive survey on transformative drug development, involving ∼180 expert physicians based at 30 leading US academic medical centres, covering 15 medical specialties. In an iterative Delphi process, the survey participants narrowed a list of all new drugs approved in their fields in the past 25 years and reached consensus over those that they considered to be most transformative, which are presented in this article. Participants were also asked how various factors affected their opinion; they most often invoked the effectiveness and superiority of the drugs over existing alternatives when identifying transformative drug innovation.
authors.affiliation: Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, 1620 Tremont St., Suite 3030, Boston, Massachusetts 02120, USA. akesselheim@partners.org
authors.forename: Aaron S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Kesselheim
authors.forename: Jerry
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Avorn
mesh_terms: D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000592:standards; D010820:Physicians / Q000639:trends
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations