A Health Affairs Blog post says real-world evidence (RWE) complements randomized controlled trials, which sometimes have limitations in comparative effectiveness research.
As the health care industry begins its slow shift toward a more value-based payment system, accurate and reliable data is becoming increasingly important.
“Both RCTs and real-world evidence can help define a treatment’s absolute value and its value relative to alternative interventions, but they do so in different ways,” the blog’s authors, Daniel Blumenthal, Kiristina Yu-Isenberg, John Yee and Anupam Jena write. “RCTs are the gold-standard study design for evaluating treatment efficacy … .”
