USA – FDA finalizes guidance on submitting RWD/RWE in application cover letters

To help better track submissions that include real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is asking drug and biologics sponsors to indicate the inclusion of such data in their premarket application cover letters.

On 8 September, FDA published a final guidance titled, Submitting Documents Using Real-World Data and Real-World Evidence to FDA for Drug and Biological Products. The draft version of the guidance was published in 2019 and was meant to help clarify the agency’s thinking on how sponsors should summarize their RWD/RWE data in product applications.

The guidance is the result of the agency’s mandate under the 21st Century Cures Act to develop a RWE program to evaluate the use of RWE in regulatory decision-making…