Globalization of the pharmaceutical industry: the physician's role in evaluating drug safety

The trend toward uniformity of drug registration procedures due to imminent European Economic Community globalization has encouraged pharmaceutical companies to conduct studies on a worldwide basis. This standardization of methods will facilitate the "poolability" of efficacy and safety data generated by these international studies into a common database. With the internationalization of the pharmaceutical marketplace, physicians in industry may be required to collect and interpret such reports from all over the globe. The globalization of the pharmaceutical industry will thus broaden the opportunities for physician involvement in safety detection.