Which pharmaceutical company met all elements of best practice in research trial audit study 2017
Executive summary
The 2017 structured audit of 42 major pharmaceutical companies concluded that corporate transparency policies were highly variable, and that “other than journal submission for all trials within 12 months, all elements of best practice were met by at least one company,” but the published audit does not identify a single named firm in the text provided here that met every discrete best-practice item [1] [2]. The study’s clear headline: meeting full transparency is realistic—some companies did so in practice—yet public policies remained ambiguous and inconsistent with companies’ own correspondence [2].
1. The question being asked: did any company fully satisfy the audit’s best-practice checklist?
The BMJ audit asked whether pharmaceutical companies’ public policies committed to sharing summary results, clinical study reports (CSRs), individual patient data (IPD), and trial registration for prospective and retrospective trials, and then compared those commitments against an established reference standard for transparency [1] [2]. The authors report that, aside from a universal commitment to submit all trials to journals within 12 months, “all elements of best practice were met by at least one company,” which implies that one or more companies had policies covering the audit’s full set of transparency criteria [1].
2. Why the paper doesn’t name the winner in the snippets provided
Although the study documents that some companies met the audit’s standards, the available excerpts and indexing records here do not quote or reproduce a table listing individual company scores or the single firm that satisfied every element [1] [2]. The BMJ article describes a structured data extraction and archiving process—saving web pages and policy documents as of April 17, 2016—and commits to repeating and refining the audit methodology, but the accessible summary material in these sources focuses on overall findings and variability rather than singling out a named “best-practice” company in the supplied excerpts [2].
3. What the study does establish about feasibility and standards
The audit’s principal, defensible claim is that comprehensive transparency commitments are realistic: at least one company had public commitments aligned with the study’s reference standard, signaling that industry-wide adoption is achievable [1]. The authors also highlight ambiguity and inconsistency in many firms’ public policies, and they link the audit’s utility to stakeholders—regulators, patient groups, investors—who can use the data to press for improvement [2].
4. Limitations, conflicts and possible agendas in the reporting
The paper’s authors disclose funding and competing interests and position the audit as a lever for advocacy and benchmarking; the study is explicitly framed as a tool to inform ethical investors and advocacy groups such as the Access to Medicines Index [2]. That framing introduces an implicit reform agenda: producing a scorecard to shame or incentivize better practices. The excerpts also note methodological openness—the team welcomes critiques and intends repeats—which suggests results were meant to spur iterative policy pressure rather than serve as a one-off public ranking [2].
5. What readers should take away and the evidence gap to resolve
The reliable takeaway is twofold: the audit found variability and ambiguity but also demonstrated that comprehensive transparency commitments are attainable because at least one company met the audit’s elements [1] [2]. However, the specific identity of the company or companies that achieved full compliance is not present in the provided material; resolving that requires consulting the full BMJ paper’s supplementary tables or the archived dataset the authors deposited—documents the authors say they collected and structured but which are not reproduced in the source excerpts here [2].