Dr Jennifer Graff on Using Real-World Evidence to Deliver High-Quality Care

Real-world evidence helps to inform high-quality care in a number of different ways, explained Jennifer Graff, PharmD, vice president of comparative effectiveness research, National Pharmaceutical Council.

Transcript

How does real-world evidence help with informing and delivering high-quality care?

Real-world evidence helps to inform high-quality care in a number of different ways. It can help from just understanding what patients are doing. Are they adhering to their medication? It helps us understand what are the best care mechanisms, what are evidence-based care pathways that we need it set up. It helps us understand which patients are most likely to be appropriate for special care management programs, identify patients that are more likely to have better outcomes or worse side effects, and it also allows us to move into value-based payment for value-based contracts. So, real-world evidence is that crux of all the things that we do across the healthcare system.

How has the uptake of health information technology impacted the use of real-world evidence?

Health information technology has really improved the quality and the caliber of real-world data that was available. Previously, it was just based upon claims. Now, it’s based upon much richer clinical data from electronic health records, mobile apps, and other sources. So, by understanding all of this, we have much more granularity to understand how patients are doing and what works best for them.