In one year, 19,340 doctors voluntarily enrolled in "ECCE", the e-learning program developed by the Italian Medicines Agency (www.aifa.progettoecce.it) which made information on drugs based solely on "evidence-based medicine" available in Italian and which made use of the free distribution to doctors of "Clinical Evidence", a compendium of the best evidence available for the treatment of the most common pathologies.
The need for greater clarity in the pharmaceutical sector arose from the observation that Italian doctors still rely too much on the pharmaceutical industries for useful information in clinical practice. Suffice it to say that according to a recent survey, on average each general practitioner receives 11 visits a week from pharmaceutical representatives and that many believe the information received from them to be reliable.
This was declared in the journal PLoS Medicine by Nello Martini and Pietro Dri of Aifa at the presentation of the results of the first year of use of e-learning for continuing medical education (EECM). Of the 19,340 (7.8% of all physicians) physicians enrolled in ECCE, nearly one in 4 (22.9%) were family physicians. From General Medicine 13-06-07
