Reducing the Unnecessary Use of Heavily Marketed Medications: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00788346. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
Reducing Unnecessary Use of Heavily Marketed Medicines: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Computerized Prescribing Alerts and Clinician Education
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Prescribing decisions by clinicians are often thought to be simple: a patient's clinical problem leads a prescriber to choose the optimal treatment. However, many factors other than the patient's condition affect prescribing decisions, including the marketing of pharmaceuticals. Clinicians are subjected to direct "detailing" by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, advertisements in medical journals and requests for specific treatments from patients, who are increasingly exposed to direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. These influences, often based on biased or inaccurate information, contribute to a variety of problems in prescribing, including the unnecessary use of expensive, heavily marketed medications. Overcoming these influences requires innovative approaches. The movement toward widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic prescribing presents new opportunities to educate both clinicians and patients at the time of medication prescribing. This project, endorsed by the AHRQ-supported Centers for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs; www.certs.hhs.gov) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), aims to test the effectiveness of computerized prescribing alerts and state-of-the-art educational outreach to reduce the unnecessary use of heavily marketed medications. A second goal is to improve clinicians' knowledge of industry marketing practices, so that they can more effectively assess information provided by drug companies. Thus, the study has two specific aims: Specific Aim 1: To assess whether computerized prescribing alerts linked electronically to patient educational material can reduce prescribing of heavily marketed medications. Specific Aim 2: To assess whether group academic detailing increases clinicians' knowledge about industry marketing practices and increases the effect of prescribing alerts.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT00788346
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 257 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- Not listed
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepts healthy volunteers
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Feb 28, 2007
- Primary completion
- Feb 29, 2008
- Completion
- Feb 29, 2008
- Last update posted
- Dec 19, 2012
2007 – 2008
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harvard Pilgrim Health Care | Boston | Massachusetts | 02215 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00788346, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Dec 19, 2012 · Synced Sep 3, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT00788346 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.