Theory of Drug Development presents a formal quantitative framework for understanding drug development that goes beyond simply describing the properties of the statistics in individual studies. It examines the drug development process from the perspectives of drug companies and regulatory agencies.
Drawing on his extensive work as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry, the author focuses on the efficient development of drugs and the quantification of evidence in drug development. He provides a rationale for underpowered phase 2 trials based on the notion of efficiency, which leads to the identification of an admissible family of phase 2 designs. He also develops a framework for evaluating the strength of evidence generated by clinical trials. This approach is based on the ratio of power to type 1 error and transcends typical Bayesian and frequentist statistical analyses.