Dr Joe V. Selby Considers Unanswered Questions of Approved Treatments

When treatments get in the marketplace and are being recommended and used, there are actually still a lot of questions that can only be answered by researching real-world data, explained Joe V. Selby, MD, MPH, executive director of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

How can the healthcare industry encourage and get patients more engaged in shared decision making?

Probably the first thing that needs to happen in the United States is we need to admit that there are a lot of questions that haven't been answered; that many times a physician makes a recommendation, it's really based on inadequate evidence. "We think this will do better for you, it's done better for other people on average."

So there's still a lot of unanswered questions about whether treatments that looked "better" in randomized trials for approval actually always behave better for all patients once these treatments are in the marketplace and being recommended and used.

There's a lot more detail that can only be learned after treatments are in the marketplace or the real world, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute funds research that leads to understand exactly that: how are these treatment choices playing out in real-world settings, and do they work the same for everybody?