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  • Review Article
  • Published:

Real-world data: towards achieving the achievable in cancer care

Abstract

The use of data from the real world to address clinical and policy-relevant questions that cannot be answered using data from clinical trials is garnering increased interest. Indeed, data from cancer registries and linked treatment records can provide unique insights into patients, treatments and outcomes in routine oncology practice. In this Review, we explore the quality of real-world data (RWD), provide a framework for the use of RWD and draw attention to the methodological pitfalls inherent to using RWD in studies of comparative effectiveness. Randomized controlled trials and RWD remain complementary forms of medical evidence; studies using RWD should not be used as substitutes for clinical trials. The comparison of outcomes between nonrandomized groups of patients who have received different treatments in routine practice remains problematic. Accordingly, comparative effectiveness studies need to be designed and interpreted very carefully. With due diligence, RWD can be used to identify and close gaps in health care, offering the potential for short-term improvement in health-care systems by enabling them to achieve the achievable.

Key points

  • In the past decade, interest in linking electronic health records (EHRs) of treatment and outcome to cancer registry data has increased; these sources of real-world data (RWD) can offer unique insights into patients, treatments and outcomes in routine oncology practice.

  • The quality of RWD relates to the quality of the primary data (completeness, accuracy and comprehensiveness), data linkages and derived variables assessed.

  • Emerging sources of RWD from EHRs, mobile applications and wearable technologies, can offer improved granularity over traditional sources of RWD, but their internal validity and applicability remain largely unknown.

  • For health-care systems, the use of RWD enables measurement of performance and can be used to identify targets for future quality improvement interventions.

  • RWD can offer important insights into outcomes achieved with new anticancer therapies in routine practice; however, the comparison of outcomes between nonrandomized groups of patients who have received different treatments in routine practice remains problematic and is not a substitute for randomized controlled trials.

  • Investigators working with RWD need to move beyond simply describing gaps in care and towards designing intervention studies to improve patient care and outcomes.

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Fig. 1: Increased reporting of studies using real-world data.
Fig. 2: Conceptual framework depicting a general scheme for research on health-care system performance.

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Acknowledgements

The work of C.M.B. is supported by his position as the Canada Research Chair in Population Cancer Care. All the authors thank I. Tannock and E. Eisenhauer for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

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Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology thanks A. Abernethy, C. Uyl-de-Groot and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Booth, C.M., Karim, S. & Mackillop, W.J. Real-world data: towards achieving the achievable in cancer care. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 16, 312–325 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41571-019-0167-7

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