From promises to policies: is big pharma delivering on transparency?

On 30 January, Johnson & Johnson joined a growing cast of major drug companies pledging to grant third party access to their clinical study data.1 Third party access to industry data has occurred on an ad hoc basis for decades. But unprecedented public concern over inaccessible data has led drug companies to streamline the process for granting access.2 3 Since 2012, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Sanofi, ViiV Healthcare, and Pfizer have established similar systems to enable access to detailed trial data including clinical study reports and electronic individual participant data. And it would seem we can only expect more announcements in the future, considering the enthusiasm expressed by the Chief Medical Officers Roundtable for a “transparent, harmonized process for access to patient-level clinical trial data.”4 (Box 1)