The ISPOR 2021 annual conference was held last week. As usual, there were numerous insightful and thought-provoking sessions and workshops to attend, aimed at improving health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) research methods.
Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic was a common theme throughout the conference. There is a tremendous amount of research being conducted to explore outcomes associated with the COVID-19 virus, treatments and vaccines but also the indirect impact on treatment patterns and outcomes in other disease areas, population mental health, and resource utilization, to name a few.
A session to highlight was ‘Real-world data and COVID-19: How will your evidence generation strategy change in the post-pandemic era?’ The speakers highlighted the need for special consideration for data collected during the COVID pandemic, for example, the interpretation of resource utilization and treatment patterns during this period when describing overall disease burden. Additionally, there was discussion regarding the inclusion of variables in inferential analyses that may impact outcomes collected during and post-pandemic, such as patient location (population density, COVID case counts, lockdown patterns, hospital capacity), COVID testing status, vaccine status, and type of vaccine.
Another common theme throughout the conference was the increased use of real-world evidence (RWE) to inform decision-making. There were sessions on improving the quality of real-world data (RWD), increasing transparency, reducing uncertainty, and expanding the application of RWD. With an increasing interest globally in managed entry agreements (MEA), also referred to as performance-based agreements, or outcomes based-agreements, strong RWE evidence strategies may be critical to a product’s successful market access.
Increased interest in RWE for decision-making, paired with the application of novel methodology for analyzing and interpreting RWD collected during and post-pandemic, creates an exciting and evolving arena for RWE researchers!
At Medlior, we look forward to growing our contribution to this field and exploring novel methodology to best utilize RWD. In 2021, we have numerous RWE studies underway across a variety of indications. Our priority is innovation through collaboration. Our RWE studies include collaborations with clinical advisors, patient groups, health system analysts, and industry partners to achieve our core purpose of positively improving patient lives worldwide, through rigorously conducted research.
