Real-World Evidence Research KOLs Discuss the Imminent Merging of EHR and Claims Data

Sebastian Schneeweiss, M.D., MsC, and colleagues at Brigham and Women&rsquo;s Hospital specialize in tapping into and harnessing the power of Real-World Evidence (RWE) via electronic health records (EHR), an important source for Pharmacoepidemiology studies. While at this point EHRs are ubiquitous in health systems across America, problematically, these systems often only identify fragments of patients&rsquo; health information across the care continuum, including primary care, specialist care, hospitalizations, and pharmacy dispensing. But this means much data about a patient becomes &ldquo;unobservable information&rdquo; especially in longitudinal evaluations of medication effects causing unmeasured confounding, misclassification, and truncated follow-up times. Dr. Schneeweiss and team have pioneered what we refer to as real-world evidence studies, using EHRs, and overcoming such challenges as made above.
RE studies uses data gathered from real-world settings to generate insights about the usage, benefits, and risks of medical products or interventions. Unlike randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that are conducted in controlled environments, RWE studies utilize data from everyday clinical practice and other real-world sources. As cited above, dependence on EHRs raise limitations involving the &ldquo;unobservable information.&rdquo;