Thanks for the relevant comment - it must be intriguing for anyone who is not used with hearing about the “real world evidence” term in medical sciences.
Usually the highest level of evidence is attributed to randomized controlled trial studies. As the name says, they are performed in a high level of control, to evaluate in a more “insulated” way, the effects of a drug/intervention in a given outcome (reduce death, cure a disease, etc). Unfortunately, we can’t always relate these academic studies with the “real world”, due to an almost infinite number of confounding variables, or in the worst case scenario, if a scientist is manipulating the experiment environment (e.g. selecting a patient population with more likelihood for the desired effect).
This is one of the reasons why you will see with increasing frequency the terms “Real World Evidence (RWE) study” in reputable journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, or The Lancet.
These studies occur taking data from epidemiological surveillance, or patient medical records, and usually do a “reality check” on data found in these trials.
Usually the highest level of evidence is attributed to randomized controlled trial studies. As the name says, they are performed in a high level of control, to evaluate in a more “insulated” way, the effects of a drug/intervention in a given outcome (reduce death, cure a disease, etc). Unfortunately, we can’t always relate these academic studies with the “real world”, due to an almost infinite number of confounding variables, or in the worst case scenario, if a scientist is manipulating the experiment environment (e.g. selecting a patient population with more likelihood for the desired effect).
This is one of the reasons why you will see with increasing frequency the terms “Real World Evidence (RWE) study” in reputable journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, or The Lancet.
These studies occur taking data from epidemiological surveillance, or patient medical records, and usually do a “reality check” on data found in these trials.
A lot of these RWE studies are famous to find problems that trials missed. Here is a classic example https://thalidomide.ca/en/what-is-thalidomide/