The Italian Medicines Agency Registry represents a tool that could be a precious source of information regarding the mean treatment duration of a drug in a real world context. Monitoring registries are applied at the national level after market authorization and are designed not only to apply the Managed Entry Agreements (MEAs) but also to collect Real World Data on drugs safety, effectiveness and real life utilization. The purpose of this analysis was to compare the treatment duration from clinical trials and the mean treatment duration calculated using data from monitoring registries (1).

For each drug included in the analysis it was collected the treatment duration from Time To Off Treatment curves for the experimental drug (eTTOT) from Phase III clinical trials and the mean treatment duration data calculated by using the number of cycles (converted in months of treatment) of all treated patients extracted from AIFA registries (TTAR). The mean ratios between the Time of Treatment of Italian Medicines Agency and Experimental arm time to off treatment were calculated to identify potential correlations. High level of correlation was expected if Time to Payment By Result /Time To Off Treatment ratio was close to 1 (±.2).

Six Roche products or different indications of the same product were identified as candidates for the analysis from 2013 to 2016. The mean TTAR/eTTOT ratio observed in patients treated from 2013 to 2016 was .97 (±.10), meaning that the mean treatment duration calculated from AIFA Registries is strongly comparable with the treatment duration observed in clinical trials. In one case the TTAR is even more major than eTTOT.

A high level of correlation between TTAR and eTTOT was found. Additional analyses considering different cohorts of patients over time could be useful to have a more precise estimate of real world drug utilization. Even though RCTs remain the gold standard for demonstrating clinical efficacy in restricted trial setting, Real World Evidence from AIFA registries can contribute to the evidence base needed for healthcare decisions.