title: Real-World Data: Policy Issues Regarding their Access and Use.
abstract: As real-world data (RWD) in health care begin to cross over to the Big Data realms, a panel of health economists was gathered to establish how well the current US policy environment further the goals of RWD and, if not, what can be done to improve matters. This report summarizes these discussions spanning the current US landscape of RWD availability and usefulness, private versus public development of RWD assets, the current inherent bias in terms of access to RWD, and guiding principles in providing quality assessments of new RWD studies. Three main conclusions emerge: (1) a business case is often required to incentivize investments in RWD assets. However, access restrictions for public data assets have failed to generate a proper market for these data and hence may have led to an underinvestment of public RWDs; (2) Very weak empirical evidence exist on for-profit entities misusing public RWD data entities to further their own agendas, which is the basis for supporting access restrictions of public RWD data; and (3) perhaps developing standardized metrics that could flag misuse of RWDs in an efficient way could help quell some of the fear of sharing public RWD assets with for-profit entities. It is hoped that these discussions and conclusions would pave the way for more rigorous and timely debates on the greater availability and accessibility of RWD assets.
authors.affiliation: *Pharmaceutical Outcome Research and Policy Program, Department of Pharmacy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA †Pfizer Inc., New York, NY ‡Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA §Departments of Medicine and Economics, and the School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, IL ∥Departments of Medicine and Health Care Management at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, PA ¶The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, NC #Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
authors.forename: Anirban
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Basu
authors.forename: Kirsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Axelsen
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Grabowski
authors.forename: David O
authors.initials: DO
authors.lastname: Meltzer
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Polsky
authors.forename: David B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Ridley
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wiederkehr
authors.forename: Tomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Philipson
mesh_terms: D022126:Access to Information / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D003219:Confidentiality / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D000068598:Data Accuracy; D003659:Decision Making, Organizational; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D011634:Public Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data