Deloitte has released its latest survey and analysis of the adoption of real-world evidence (RWE) by the biopharmaceutical industry, and how it relates to real-world data (RWD). RWD is defined as “health care data gathered from a variety of sources, outside of randomized controlled clinical trials [including] electronic medical records, health insurance claims, genomic data, and data from health apps, wearables and other biometric devices.”

RWD is closely connected to RWE, which Deloitte describes as “the insights that are generated from [RWD].” While RWD has been used in many sectors, health care organizations are now able to use RWD to address complicated issues in health care, such as examining what products work, for whom they work, in what context they work and cost. The survey features responses from 20 RWE, IT, scientific, medical and business executives in life science companies around the world.

Survey results found that RWE is a major factor when it comes to business strategy, with 13 respondents indicating that their companies are investing in obtaining health care data through vendors and external collaborations with technology companies, payers, advocacy groups and health systems. According to the respondents, these companies, more so than others, are using RWE to implement value-based contracting and are using AI machine learning for RWE analytics. According to a survey analysis, 90% of respondents either already have RWE capabilities or are undergoing efforts to establish RWE capabilities.

Respondents stated that the most significant areas of impact of current and future RWE applications include a better understanding of subpopulations as well as the heterogeneity of treatment effects; understanding the complexity of diseases; and pharmacovigilance, or the monitoring of patient safety.

Source: Deloitte