A lingering question in drug development is why an industry that generates – and discards – huge volumes of investigatory data finds it so hard to share this bounty with others in the fight against disease. As recently as March 2017, a group of prominent researchers took to the New England Journal of Medicine asking why opening a vast storehouse of trial data to public view “always sits at the end of the long list of clinical research responsibilities, taking more than 60 years to receive the attention it deserves.”
But as time yields to a new decade, signs of a fundamental shift are beginning to appear. Awareness of the...