Abstract
Facing increasing resource pressure, stakeholders in healthcare are seeking real-world evidence (RWE) of effectiveness and safety for informed decision-making. Increasing attention is being drawn to pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) for their emerging roles in generating high-quality RWE. Principles of PCTs challenge some well-established guidelines in randomized clinical trials (RCTs), as open-label and treatment switch in intention-to-treat (ITT) population being the most pronounced ones. This review discusses key methodological and statistical implications of PCTs in the context of drug development and reimbursement, with emphasis on study design and analyses to maximize external validity. Many of those aspects are very challenging and are expected to crystallize over time after more research is done.
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Jiang, D., Chen, K., Mukhopadhyay, S., Katta, N., Zhang, L. (2019). Review of Statistical Issues in Pragmatic Clinical Trials in Current Drug Development Environment. In: Zhang, L., Chen, DG., Jiang, H., Li, G., Quan, H. (eds) Contemporary Biostatistics with Biopharmaceutical Applications. ICSA Book Series in Statistics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15310-6_16
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