title: On heterogeneity of treatment effects and clinical freedom.
abstract: Three decades ago, John R Hampton announced the death of clinical freedom. Since then, evidence-based medicine has been the predominant paradigm in clinical research. By applying a population-based approach, the randomised controlled trial has become the cornerstone for demonstrating the overall effect of a treatment and for developing guidelines. The new patient-centred medicine movement is rediscovering the important implications of heterogeneity of treatment effects for clinical practice and that a better understanding of such variability can contribute to improve health outcomes for individual patients through practicing a science-based clinical freedom.
authors.affiliation: Medical Department, Lilly, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Sacristán
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Avendaño-Solá
mesh_terms: D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005610:Freedom; D006801:Humans; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000639:trends*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data