Reality Check: Are We Bridging the Evidence Gaps for Patients?

This plenary session will take place after the two others that will address first the payers’ perspective and then the HTA’s perspective. This last session will focus on the regulatory step and discuss how the needs from all the stakeholders could be better anticipated, considering the discussions that would have taken place during the two other sessions.

We, regulators, HTA agencies, payers and pharmaceutical industry, are all working closely with patients to ensure that innovative drugs can benefit patients as early as possible. This collaboration is guided by the ambition to enable and use the generation of reliable and valid evidence that will address and answer different questions, e.g. for benefit/risk assessment, for relative effectiveness assessment... We are relying on the totality of evidence generated, either from randomized controlled trials, or from other designs such as studies using real-world data. Even if differences in scope may exist, there are overlapping commonalities in what constitutes meaningful evidence generation. We also must deal with (remaining) uncertainties at different stages of decision making. How can we limit these uncertainties, and ensure that at the end of the overall approval process, all stakeholders get the needed evidence to take an informed decision and ensure an innovative drug reach the patients if appropriate?