Efficacy
Ability to finish a task satisfactorily / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about use in pharmacology, medicine and Christian theology. For electrical engineering, see Luminous efficacy. For business, see Individual Voluntary Arrangement.
Not to be confused with Efficiency.
Efficacy is the ability to perform a task to a satisfactory or expected degree. The word comes from the same roots as effectiveness, and it has often been used synonymously, although in pharmacology a distinction is now often made between efficacy and effectiveness.[1]
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The word efficacy is used in pharmacology and medicine to refer both to the maximum response achievable from a pharmaceutical drug in research settings,[2] and to the capacity for sufficient therapeutic effect or beneficial change in clinical settings.