As the life sciences sector rapidly progresses into the digital age, several tools are emerging with the potential to revolutionise how data is collected in the real-world setting – offering developers better insights into their drug or device’s overall day-to-day benefit.
This comes as pharma companies increasingly acknowledge the benefits of collecting real-world evidence (RWE), as it promises to offer validation of a drug or device’s benefit, while allowing doctors to tailor their care depending on the insights garnered.
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At the 2026 HLTH Europe conference, held in Amsterdam from 15-18 June, RWE was a hot topic of discussion, with several panel discussions dedicated to how such data can be used to boost outcomes, drive better drug development and improve the healthcare sector’s ability to offer personalised treatment.
In two panel sessions on the second day of the conference, digital health and data experts highlighted the importance of RWE but also pointed to systemic and data-driven challenges the industry must tackle to harness its full potential.
Digital health ushers in new generation of RWE collection
As the use of digital health technologies such as wearables and health apps balloons across both the consumer and regulated healthcare sectors, the industry is increasingly employing these tools to collect actionable health data.
This comes as sponsor focus begins to shift away from episodic data – which captures a patient’s condition only at a certain point in time – towards continuous, real-time insights that can offer a broader view of a patient’s condition.
According to Verily’s director of research, Lisa Lehmann, continuous data garnered from digital health technologies will likely be used in several new contexts over time, championed by the success of devices like continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), which can allow diabetics to effectively and proactively manage their condition without the need for regular finger pricking.
While digital health tools continue to gain prevalence, Lehmann believes that companies that create a product providers trust and can use to make data useful will ultimately win in this space, while Abhishek Pratap, head of medicine, digital health technologies at Boehringer Ingelheim, believes that user-centricity is a key ingredient in the winning formula when using RWE.
Making data a core focus
In another panel discussion, Ben Taylor, CFO and president of Recursion, stressed that the industry should put data at the heart of its considerations. “It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about chemistry, biology, patient selection or clinical trial design – data should be the foundation of decision making, rather than a tool you add on to a process; this is the attitude shift we need across the industry,” he said.
However, Taylor noted that the quality of the available data is generally low and not made for machine learning (ML). Generating more data which is annotated in a consistent way and is compatible with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms is key to progression in the field. This will allow companies to derive accurate signals from their data, Taylor added.
When garnering insights from RWE, David Thornton, President of Genomics, believes it is important to democratise access to insights from the data collected, which will likely require scientists to lean into the scientific insights that can be offered by AI models. To achieve this, Thornton noted that AI adoption and uptake across a company must take an ‘all in’ approach.
While data can be the key to unlocking health insights to cater therapeutic approaches, Richard Cassidy, SVP Rx+ business accelerator at Astellas, said that physicians don’t usually want more data. “They’re overburdened, and they don’t need it; what they want is information that directly helps them to make the best, most robust decision for a patient,” he commented.
When collating RWE, he stresses the importance of understanding what decision the data is trying to influence, while having a strong understanding of patient needs at an individual level, and what physicians need to make decisions around the care of these individuals. Yajing Zhu, director of computational RWE at Novo Nordisk, echoed this sentiment, noting that sponsors should be asking the right questions to “move the needle”.
Systemic change lags
As RWE generation increasingly shifts towards a continuous approach, Cassidy warns that systemic change will be needed to truly harness continuous datasets derived from digital health tools, as current regulations focus on evaluating a fixed dataset that can then be submitted to a regulator.
“If you have an incorporated or standalone digital therapy, the data set produced by it is continually growing, evolving and changing,” he said.
Lehmann echoed Cassidy’s sentiments, noting that pharma companies must overcome fundamental challenges to fully gain their benefit alongside drugs – including the need to establish what counts as “decision-grade” evidence on a broad scale.
“There are also foundational challenges in terms of infrastructure, and how we translate digital health technologies into the real world, so they’re actually adopted and can improve patient outcomes,” Lehmann concluded.
