Hoffmann-La Roche Limited (Roche Canada) announces a joint initiative with BC Cancer and the Canadian Personalized Healthcare Innovation Network (CPHIN) to co-create a real-world evidence (RWE) framework in British Columbia known as the Precision Oncology Evidence Development in Cancer Treatment (PREDiCT). The PREDiCT initiative will generate and assess RWE, which may be used to help shape new sustainable reimbursement pathways for personalized cancer treatments.

This initiative marks a leading public-private collaboration in personalized healthcare in Canada and, if proven successful, represents an important milestone towards a healthcare system that leverages real-world and clinical trial data to provide the right care options for patients and inform policies that ensure cost-effective access.

"The core hope of PREDiCT is to change the BC Cancer healthcare data ecosystem and the way we make decisions," says Dr. Dean Regier, senior scientist, BC Cancer and PREDiCT co-principal investigator. "This initiative is moving forward with the intent of operationalizing learning healthcare systems for life cycle health technology assessment, with a view to generate real-world evidence to make better-informed decisions about treatment efficacy, patient value, and cost-effectiveness."

PREDiCT will initially be piloted at BC Cancer centers and CPHIN will convene healthcare partners to facilitate cross-provincial learning and scale the program beyond British Columbia. The ultimate goal is integrating a national framework to enable a more streamlined approach for patient access to cost-effective innovative treatments and technologies across many disease areas.

"Real-world evidence holds the potential to demonstrate how targeted treatments can improve patient care and clinical outcomes, but the current approach to leveraging RWE is fragmented and untapped," says Dr. Helen Chen, President, CPHIN. "Through this public-private partnership, PREDiCT paves the way for Canada-wide use of RWE at the healthcare decision-making level and unlock data insights that could lead to better patient outcomes."