"Real world" populations compared to clinical trials : can electronic record linkage be used to identify trial eligible patients?

Baillie, Kelly and Crearie, Christine and Mueller, Tanja and Pan, Jiafeng and Jones, Rob and Bennie, Marion and Laskey, Jennifer (2018) "Real world" populations compared to clinical trials : can electronic record linkage be used to identify trial eligible patients? Journal of Oncology Pharmacy Practice, 24 (8 (Sup). ISSN 1477-092X (https://doi.org/10.1177/1078155218796724)

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Abstract

The Cancer Medicines Outcomes Programme aims to develop a process to determine clinical outcome data of cancer medicines in Scotland using routinely collected, electronically linked health records. Such, ‘real world’ patient populations are not necessarily directly comparable to clinical trial populations suggesting that outcome data from clinical trials may not provide a suitable benchmark. It is therefore important to be able to describe the demographics of a population to contextualise outcome data. The aim of this study was to determine whether electronic record linkage (ERL) could be used to evaluate the potential eligibility of patients for inclusion in a relevant clinical trial. Although many eligibility criteria used in the clinical trials could be applied to ERL, others could not. Nevertheless, ERL can be used to estimate the number of patients being treated with a specific cancer medicine who may have been eligible for inclusion in the respective trial – information that could be useful when comparing results from an observational study to clinical trial results.

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