Background
Real-World Data (RWD) are data relating to patient health status and/or the delivery of health care routinely collected from a variety of sources. Real-World Evidence (RWE) is the clinical evidence about the usage and potential benefits or risks of a medical product derived from analysis of RWD. RWD can be analyzed to produce RWE on the usage and/or benefits and risks of a medication or a medical product. RWD and RWE offer the possibility to bring about novel insights on patients’ clinical care, regulatory decision-making, and health technology assessment. Detailed information on data sources, data standards, data reliability, how to generate evidence, and regulatory considerations can be found on FDA’s document titled Framework for FDA’s Real-World Evidence Program (U.S. FDA, 2018). Randomized Controlled Trials have limited external validity since the results from a study conducted in a specially selected homogeneous patient subpopulation, and carried out under ideal circumstances, may not necessarily extend well to the general (heterogeneous) patient population with complex care needs, multiple comorbidities, or concomitant medications (Katkade et al, 2018).
