Viraj Narayanan: Real-World Data Are Not Going to Replace Clinical Trials

Instead of replacing clinical trials, real-world data will be used to supplement traditional clinical trial information, said Viraj Narayanan, MBA, vice president of Life Sciences at COTA Healthcare.

Transcript:

How should real-world data be used in conjunction or alongside clinical trial methods?

I think one of the most common myths or misconceptions we hear is that real-world data is going to replace clinical trials. I certainly do not hold that perspective. I think it's going to be augmenting and supplementing traditional clinical trial information. When you think about how it can augment clinical trial information, probably the use case that we're most excited about is for single arm clinical trials, where the sponsor is essentially using their investigational agent for a subset of patients and a treatment arm. You're trying to match that treatment arm to like patients in the real world. If this use case can really take off, we're talking about rewiring the traditional clinical trial process: taking millions of dollars out of the system, getting patients to drugs who really need them earlier.