Real World Data and Digital Oncology – Digital Health as Cancer Care Facilitator: the Power of a Standardised European Health Record 2024

It is with great pleasure that I invite you to participate in the second ESMO Real World Data and Digital Oncology Webinar which will focus on the challenges we face with real-world data in oncology and how digital health can help facilitate management of this data for both patient care and secondary use of data for research in the field.

There has been an exponential increase in the volume of health data collected in the digital medicine era. In research, the evidence generated by the analysis of these data, or real-world evidence, is important as it better reflects outcomes of patients in real world settings. Nevertheless, real world studies still have a limited scientific impact on clinical decision making, as they harbour many quality issues, particularly at the primary data collection level. Similarly, due to great heterogeneity in health systems across different European countries, we are limited regarding interoperability and sharing of this health data. This prevents us from optimal cross-border collaboration for both patient healthcare and research. As there is a need for standardised primary data collection, digital health efforts, such as the European standardised electronic health record XpanDH project, could help us in this process.

The webinar will start with a brief survey for the audience on their knowledge on the subject. Then it will be constructed as follows; first we will present the common caveats of most currently available real-world data sources; then, we will talk about the unmet needs regarding standardised primary data and show how we can learn from other disciplines, and finally, Prof. Henrique Martins will briefly present the XpanDH project.

The webinar will conclude with a live discussion of questions submitted by the audience whilst the webinar is taking place.

I am delighted to announce the distinguished speakers who will join me in this webinar, and I encourage and invite you to register and join us all in this new ESMO activity.

Dr Anna Pellat

And

Carola Schulz