PCN184 Understanding the VALUE of Real-World Evidence (RWE) in Health Economics: Are Traditional Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRS) Omitting Key Evidence for Health Technology Assessment (HTA)?

Abstract

Real-world data (RWD) has become an important source of evidence to support payer decision-making during HTA. However, traditional SLRs do not always capture RWD; they are updated annually and mainly consist of full-text articles, which may miss important evidence presented at congresses. We aimed to identify and describe the extent of RWE relevant to health economics presented at congresses using an example in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). An SLR of RWE presented at congresses was performed using pre-defined search terms and Population, Intervention & Comparators, Outcomes and Study Design (PICOS)-based criteria. Abstracts presented at AMCP, ASCO, ASH, EBMT, EHA, ESMO, IWM, ISPOR, LLM, and TCT in 2019 and 2020 were reviewed and categorized using the PubTracker™ platform to identify all relevant RWE AML publications. A total of 451 relevant RWE AML publications (2019 and 2020) were identified within ASH (31%), EHA (25%), EBMT (17%), TCT (16%), ASCO (6%), ISPOR (5%), and other congresses (1%). A higher proportion of abstracts was published in 2019 (59%) versus 2020 (41%). Studies were mainly conducted in the USA (42%), Europe (38%), and Asia (14%). Outcomes included efficacy/safety (N=366), economic burden of illness (N=60), survival (N=52), epidemiology (N=36), health-related quality of life (HRQoL) (N=22), and treatment patterns (N=20), most frequently using a retrospective study design (89%). Within these publications, approximately 45% of the HRQoL real-world abstracts and 17% of economic burden of illness abstracts were selected for inclusion in HRQoL and economic SLRs, which were originally based on traditional searches and were being updated for HTA re-submissions. RWE fills an important gap in expanding the evidence base available to reimbursement decision-makers on treatment patterns and the impact of new treatments on humanistic and economic disease burden. Thus, a timely review of congresses presenting RWE should be considered an integral part of health economic evidence generation.