Seminar on real-world evidence
Real-world evidence is a concept that has become increasingly common in the pharmaceutical industry in recent years. Today, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) account for an overwhelming majority of the basis for calculating drug costs and effects. During a seminar on May 16, 2023, organized by the Centre for Health Economic Research and Lif, the participants learned about the need for real-world evidence from the perspective of both the industry and TLV.
There is no doubt about the internal validity of RCTs. However, randomized controlled trials can be costly and only capture the usefulness of drugs under controlled circumstances. During the seminar, Anders Viberg from TLV highlighted that actual drug use is difficult to study with only experimental data. The industry representative, Sofie Gustafsson, further emphasized that real-world data should be seen as a complement to data from randomized controlled studies, not a replacement. After that, HEFUU's Bertil Lindahl showed how different regions and hospitals tend to implement new medicines and treatments at different rates, as well as the reasons for this. Jonathan Siverskog, postdoc at HEFUU, then presented how differences in the implementation of medical interventions can be used for effect evaluation. He exemplified the difference with a new study of Ticagrelor, where the variation in the time of implementation of the drug between different Swedish hospitals was used to investigate its effect.