Although the clinical trials industry is rapidly adopting real-world data (RWD), significant barriers and challenges remain to accessing robust, primary patient data, which impacts the optimal use of real-world evidence (RWE), according to a new survey by Inteliquet of professionals from pharma, biopharma, medical technology, and medical device companies, as well as contract research organizations.
“Accumulating data is not the significant problem for [the life sciences sector]; accumulating the right data is,” said Marie E. Lamont, interim president and chief operating officer at Inteliquet. “There is a need to better organize and validate data to improve its RWE utility in our highly regulated industry.”
An overwhelming majority of respondents (91%) report they currently use RWD in clinical development and decision-making, and 84% have internal systems to capture and analyze RWD. On average, organizations polled use RWD in:
- Clinical trial designs (65% of respondents)
- Early research and development preclinical planning (52%)
- Clinical development (52%)
- Postmarket observational studies (50%)
Looking ahead, organizations surveyed said they plan to substantially boost the resources they commit to RWD:
- 89% of organizations plan to grow their budgets in 2020.
- Two-thirds (66%) said they will increase their budgets by 20% or more.
- Nearly half (46%) said their budgets will increase by more than 40%.
- At least 53% of responding organizations already allocate more than $100,000 per year to RWD.
Currently, the most common sources of RWD are electronic health records (used by 58% of respondents) and population health sources of aggregated data (used by 54% of respondents).
A large chunk of those surveyed (67%) said they see value in accessing data from mobile devices, social media, health apps, wearables, or other biometric devices, although only 49% currently use data from these sources.
Author: Michael Causey
