PhD defence Marianne (M. ) Luyendijk

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

Complexities in oncology

Cancer care faces many complex challenges. Every year, numerous new medicines and treatments are approved based on clinical trials. However, it is often unclear whether they truly benefit patients in everyday practice. In addition, these treatments can cause side effects and are frequently very costly. Therefore, there is a strong need for reliable data to better understand whether new treatments actually improve care for patients with cancer.

There is an enormous amount of data, but how can we make the best use of it?

A large amount of data is collected about cancer patients. Healthcare professionals document information in patient records and report delivered care to health insurers. In addition, registries systematically collect information about patients, their treatments, and outcomes.

These data sources—often referred to as real-world data—can provide valuable insights. In this thesis, we showed that such data can show how new medicines are used in clinical practice, serve as input for cost-effectiveness analyses, and provide insight about the survival of patients with metastatic cancer and their trends over time.

Despite their value, real-world data also have important limitations. The data are spread across different systems and are not collected for research purposes. As a result, it is still challenging to use these data effectively to answer the most important questions that exist in the field.