Objectives: Following the rise of precision medicine, real-world evidence (RWE) has been playing an increasingly important role in the development of anticancer therapies. Regulators, payers and health technology assessment agencies are more and more relying on RWE to inform and support their decision-making. However, it is unclear how cancer clinicians perceive this trend, and the value they attribute to such evidence has not been properly characterized before. The objective of this study is to gain insight into their views on the use of RWE in the field of oncology.
Methods: We designed an online survey that was disseminated to clinicians who are part of the EORTC network, which comprises over 2,500 investigators.
Results: 557 clinicians across 30 countries provided responses to the survey, representing 13 different cancer domains. The vast majority (77.0%) of the respondents believed that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) should still be considered the gold standard for generating clinical evidence in oncology, and a plurality (49.2%) thought that RWE cannot fully address the knowledge gaps that remain once a new antineoplastic treatment has entered the market. Furthermore, most (50.7%) investigators relied more strongly on RCT-derived evidence than on RWE for their decision-making. Nevertheless, despite not agreeing on its most appropriate definition, 75.0% of the survey participants had positive opinions about RWE, and many (77.0%) clinicians were supportive of the idea that such evidence would play a greater role in the development of antitumor interventions in the future. Nearly all (94.0%) respondents were also at least open to the possibility of sharing anonymized or pseudonymized data of their patients with external parties for research purposes.
Conclusions: While cancer clinicians continue to place great value on RCTs as sources of evidence, they view RWE positively, and they would be willing to contribute to its generation.

Perceptions of Clinicians on the use of Real-World Evidence in Oncology: An EORTC Survey

DIA Europe 2022

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