Barriers and Facilitators of Utilizing Real-World Evidence to Support Policy Decisions in Central and Eastern Europe

We aimed to identify drivers and solutions to overcome the barriers of the effective use of real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) in Central and Eastern Europe.

First, a targeted literature review was followed by an experts' workshop aiming to refine and complement the identification of current barriers and drivers. Next, we performed a gap analysis on the barriers based on their importance and actionability. The scores of importance and actionability for each barrier were determined through a questionnaire completed by the experts. Finally, a second experts' workshop was held to develop recommendations to overcome the most important actionable barriers and to collect case studies of RWD/RWE utilization.

A total of 22 publications were included in the data extraction phase of the targeted literature review. After the first experts' workshop, 16 barriers and 9 drivers were identified. At the second workshop 9 solutions were proposed in 4 main intervention areas. In addition, 13 case studies were provided from the 4 countries, where RWD/RWE was used effectively.

The effective use of RWD/RWE in health-policy decision making still faces several barriers in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. This research highlighted the most important barriers and collected recommendations by key experts on how to improve the utilization of RWD/RWE. In addition, we have identified several drivers for the use of RWD/RWE, alongside with 13 case studies, in which RWD/RWE was used effectively.