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. 2012 Feb 7:344:e55.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.e55.

Pragmatic randomised trials using routine electronic health records: putting them to the test

Tjeerd-Pieter van Staa  1 , Ben Goldacre, Martin Gulliford, Jackie Cassell, Munir Pirmohamed, Adel Taweel, Brendan Delaney, Liam Smeeth
Affiliations

Pragmatic randomised trials using routine electronic health records: putting them to the test

Tjeerd-Pieter van Staa et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

What to prescribe for a patient in general practice when the choice of treatments has a limited evidence base? Tjeerd-Pieter van Staa and colleagues argue that using electronic health records to enter patients into randomised trials of treatments in real time could provide the answer

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: the two feasibility REACT trials within the general practice research database (GPRD) are being funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment. The GPRD is owned by the UK Department of Health and operates within the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and has received funding from the MHRA, Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (MRC), National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme, Innovative Medicine Initiative, UK Department of Health, Technology Strategy Board, Seventh Framework Programme EU, various universities, contract research organisations, and pharmaceutical companies. The Department of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacotherapy, Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences has received unrestricted funding for pharmacoepidemiological research from GlaxoSmithKline, Novo Nordisk, the private-public funded Top Institute Pharma, the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board, and the Dutch Ministry of Health. MP is supported by the Department of Health, MRC, NIHR, and the Wellcome Trust. LS is an NIHR senior investigator and is supported by a senior clinical fellowship from the Wellcome Trust. BG is supported by a fellowship from the Wellcome Trust. They have no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

References

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