Or perhaps not so much a makeover, but a radical shift in how drug research is decided upon, performed and reported. The suggestions come from Sir Iain Chalmers, who is editor of the James Lind Library in Oxford, and Silvio Garattini, director of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they say that their proposals would not only benefit patients but also industry, which is not winning any prizes for popularity at present.

They are:

1) Patients to be involved in shaping the research agenda – in other words, making sure research questions have resonance in real life and real-world situations

2) Legal requirements for research to be published, including trial protocols, by all (mandatory publication of trial data has had legal backing in the US since late 2007; no such protection for patients currently exists in the UK)

3) Independent evaluation of drugs. As the paper says: “The monopoly that the drugs industry has in evaluating its own products, and the secrecy surrounding this process, leads to biased evidence that is currently only rarely questioned by independent studies.”

4) A requirement to demonstrate “added value” for all new drugs – is this drug better than the current best drug treatment, or does it benefit in addition to it, and is it better than non-drug treatments? Too often, trials are done comparing a new treatment to placebo where there is a known intervention which is better than placebo. This means that uncertainty about how to use it best persists.

The authors say that these would help improve public confidence in pharma, would improve returns from investment in R&D, but could also improve efficiency in other ways. For example: “Tim Mant, a director of a major contract research organisation, has acknowledged how frustrating it is to be commissioned to organise a clinical trial that he knows is going up a scientific blind ally because he has been there previously with another company but cannot divulge information that is commercially confidential.”

I hope that people in the pharmaceutical industry take notice: I would genuinely love to write about the improvements that are being made.