Good Evidence: The Missing Link

There’s no question that great advances in medicine have been made over the last century. Still, not every medical technology, service, and intervention that we have at our fingertips is safe or works as well as or better than existing options. That’s what clinical trials are for: to figure out how well a product or medical technology works and compares with other approaches, to identify when and for whom it should be used, and, ultimately, to determine its clinical value. If the clinical trial evidence shows a clear benefit, then we need to make sure we’re using the medical technology in the way in which it was intended—for the appropriate disease and patient population. This is what we call evidence-based medicine, a common buzzword these days that everyone seems to be talking about. But as we know, talk doesn’t necessarily align with behavior, does it?