Network Meta-Analyses of Real-World Evidence: A Systematic Review of Methods

Network meta-analysis (NMA) compares multiple health technologies when there is a lack of direct evidence with randomized controlled trials (RCT) alone. While supplementing RCTs with robust real-world evidence (RWE) in NMAs has become standard practice, NMAs of RWE alone are now being used to gain insights into the patient experience in clinical practice. This SLR aimed to assess the quality of published RWE-only NMAs and evaluate the statistical methods used to account for clinical and statistical heterogeneity.