COVID-19: The Critical Role of Real-World Evidence Made Real

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the HLTH Matters Blog Series will be interviewing experts from across the health ecosystem to bring timely facts and updates to the HLTH community. A post written by Aetion CEO Carolyn Magill details the role of real-world evidence in the fight against coronavirus.

“I’m certain that it’s critical we look to real-world data (RWD), right now, for answers,” Magill wrote.

Real-world data represent our daily lives as captured by sources like health insurance claims, electronic health records, labs, and wearable devices. The benefit of RWD is that they provide a rich and current view of patient experiences, sometimes with as few as a two-day lag time. They shed light on practice patterns and outcomes for people in different demographics and people with various co-occurring diseases.

With the right level of scientific rigor, Magill wrote, we can transform these data into real-world evidence (RWE), evidence that is credible enough for conclusions on treatment safety and effectiveness. At Aetion, they use the Aetion Evidence Platform to quickly run and re-run analyses as data accrue, and to support transparency and replicability of results.

Aetion isn’t alone in looking to RWD to address the COVID-19 crisis. The company has joined with the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA and Friends of Cancer Research in a joint effort called COVID-19 Evidence Accelerator. These kinds of cross-industry collaborations—with data providers, governments, academia, and health systems—deliver insights to the people who need them most.

A collaboration between Aetion and HealthVerity resulted in the development of the Real-Time Insights and Evidence system. The company’s biopharma and payer partners are using the system to get data that allows researchers to create a system of studies to respond in real time to COVID-19.

“Lastly, especially, I’m grateful to the scientists that will lead us to the other side of this crisis, as they help the world understand, manage, and treat disease,” Magill concluded.

Originally published in the Hlth Matters blog