The last decade has seen major advances and innovations in the field of cancer, on a number of levels. Many innovative drugs and new technologies have been approved by Health Canada, and there are more and more psychosocial interventions to support those with a diagnosis and their families (e.g. physical activity, self-management) that also affect clinical outcomes. The complexity, management costs and decision-making processes induced by the explosion of these innovations are considerable.

While patients may benefit from improved quality of life and survival, the cost of implementing and adopting these innovations puts enormous pressure on the healthcare system. Due to economic considerations, multiple priorities, and/or uncertainties about the real-world effectiveness of these innovations, many are not accessible in a timely or optimal manner, or at all, to patients who could benefit from them. What’s more, although the number of therapeutic agents approved for advanced cancer is high, the number of randomized clinical trials evaluating them head-to-head is still very limited.

In this context, real-world evidence is becoming increasingly important in providing complementary information to ECRs to support the decision-making system. Among other things, this real-life evidence will help clinicians to make more informed decisions when selecting a treatment for a particular patient, with the ultimate aim of aiding personalized medicine.

The main objective of this platform1

• Facilitate the collection and integration of clinical data to improve understanding of the links between (i) treatments; (ii) the reasons for their initiation; (iii) identifiable real-life effects (positive and negative)
• Facilitate the integration and use of clinical-administrative data to evaluate the use, efficacy and safety of treatments in real-life situations.
• Support methodological development to facilitate the integration of real-life data into the economic evaluation of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical treatments.
• Facilitate the collection and integration of patient-reported data (PROMs & PREMs) into real-life evaluations;
• Develop and disseminate resources to help manage issues specific to real-world evaluation (e.g. diversity and inclusion, FAIRification and research data management, social acceptability and privacy).