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Table 2 Key points illustrated by the olanzapine case study

From: How long does biomedical research take? Studying the time taken between biomedical and health research and its translation into products, policy, and practice

Track

Point illustrated

Discovery track

Activity in this track continued even after several human studies had been conducted

Research tracks

The publication sources linked to several key events occurred well after the event itself and sometimes after activity had already started in the next track: the publication source for the animal testing was a later court case over a patent dispute; the Phase I trial was described in a later account of the stream of research; and the Phase II trial was described in a paper published sometime after Phase III had started

National and clinical policy guidelines track

While there may appear to be quite a long delay between the launch of the medicine in the UK in 1990 and the NICE recommendation in 2002, it should be remembered that NICE only began publishing clinical guidelines shortly before 2002

Overall

In the case study it has been possible to develop a matrix to illustrate the movement from the early research to the NICE recommendation over a 28-year period and involving activity in most of the tracks