A day in the life of a Real World Evidence Consultant

Before we delve into a day of a Real World Evidence (RWE) Consultant you may ask “What is RWE?”.  Good question!

In a court room, having evidence may throw a case one way or another and the same applies to the funding of medicines.  Having meaningful evidence, demonstrating the benefit of a medicine or device, may influence who can access it and how often healthcare professionals prescribe it.

RWE is evidence obtained from ‘real world’ data which is outside of randomised controlled trials and can be used to support payer decision-making, educate healthcare professionals and elevate the patient voice. It may include demonstrating the relative effectiveness of a medicine compared with current treatments, an evaluation of a current service, patient preference for treatment administration or perhaps exploring the hospital resource use of a group of patients.  The list goes on!

As a RWE Consultant at OPEN VIE you work with a variety of clients across a vast range of therapy areas.  I’m currently working across rare haematological conditions, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease and liver disease … to name a few.

It’s fair to say no two days are the same as a RWE Consultant, something which I love about my job. Today I’m working out of the Marlow office, but may base myself out of the London office later in the week.

My first stop for the day is a Business Development meeting to discuss monthly revenue, opportunities with new clients and how we can continue to support existing ones. I then have a quick meeting with the other RWE Consultants to discuss workload and how we can support one another.

Afterwards I head straight into an internal meeting to discuss an existing project where we are looking to review patients’ medical records to describe patient outcomes on a particular therapy.  We have a Data Manager, Project Manager and Medical Writer around the table, where we discuss timelines and troubleshoot which cohort of patients should be included in the study.  With multiple projects running at once, it’s likely I’ll have a few of these this week.

Time for lunch out on Marlow High Street and a walk down to the river. There’s a step challenge within the team and, being quite competitive, I add another lap of the park before heading back to the office!

Before starting work on a proposal I’ve arranged a brainstorming session with my colleagues in the market access and digital teams to ensure we are offering our clients meaningful and innovative solutions to meet their needs.  I’ll draw up some project costs and a timeline ready to circulate to the client for review.

We have regular catch ups with our clients where we give a project update and discuss actions from both parties in the coming days and weeks. This afternoon I have a catch up where we’re discussing requirements for an upcoming ethics submission, something that is required for some of our studies before they can be rolled out.  

It's nearly home time, but before I go, I’ll write a to-do list for tomorrow so I can hit the ground running!

I started at OPEN Health on the graduate training programme and spent 18 months on rotation around the business before accepting a permanent role within OPEN VIE. The variety of projects and enthusiastic work colleagues are a massive perk of my job but ultimately the reason I love it is because I’m helping patients access therapies that could impact their lives for the better. I can’t think of a more rewarding role!

If you are interested in working for an energetic, fun and fast-paced agency I recommend visiting our careers page or you can drop us an email talentteam@openhealthgroup.com to explore opportunities within RWE or across the wider OPEN Health Group.