How is Real-World Data Leveraged to Improve Outcomes in the Context of COVID-19?

August 21, 2020

In this time of crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers and leaders have to look beyond time-intensive, expensive randomized controlled trials. In order to find answers to ever-evolving questions, researchers need to turn to information that constantly evolves: Real-world data.

COVID-19 has brought the significance of real-world data collection to light, a lesson that will carry through to life after the pandemic. Organizations are using real-world data for efficient and effective decision-making to improve outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond using EHR data, patient registries, and mobile device information.

“We found that when we were caring for patients with COVID-19, it was hard to conduct research and clinical care at the same time. It’s important to be able to collect clinical data as much as possible, because then we can build predictive models and use them quickly, as opposed to waiting until we finalize these tools because we don’t have enough data,” said Olivier Elemento, PhD, director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine and professor of computational genomics in pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell.

The breadth of this data can easily overwhelm entities without the tools or capacity to make sense of it. And even if they do have what they need to draw comprehensive conclusions from this information, quickly executing an efficient response is another task entirely.

Elemento adds: “People are starting to realize that there’s a lot of importance and power in real-world data and that we need to be better at collecting this information, potentially on short notice.” Read more about how RWE is being used in the fight against COVID-19 here.