Innovation and sharing
The New York Times has an article today, “Cancer Data? Sorry, Can’t Have It,” lamenting the frequency with which cancer researchers refuse to share data from clinical trials that could be used to validate new therapies. The author recounts one instance several years ago where a study showed that a particular drug worked well in some cases, but not in others. At the same time, another researcher developed a test to predict which patients might benefit from therapy. The author, realizing that the test might improve the performance of the drug, requested data from the drug trials. The researchers who conducted the trials refused to share the data, claiming that they might want to perform such a study themselves. They have not done so as of this date.
This kind of sharing is important because it turns out that a large percentage of new therapies are discovered not by the original drug manufacturers, but by downstream clinicians who use the drugs. Harold DeMonaco, Ayfer Ali and Eric von Hippel studied the development of new, off-label uses for drugs. They found that 59% of the new therapies were discovered by field clinicians. This is surprising given the very strong incentives that drug manufacturers have to find new uses for their products.
This suggests that innovation may depend heavily on knowledge held by the users of technology and those who have knowledge of complementary technologies. If so, then information sharing of one sort or another might be critical to innovation and policy should encourage this sharing, especially for government-financed studies.
