Eva Villalba serves as the executive director of the Quebec Cancer Coalition (La Coalition Priorité Cancer au Québec), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving Quebec’s health care system and advocating for the needs of cancer patients. As a prominent advocate for Value-Based Health Care in Canada, Eva champions a healthcare model focused on delivering personalized, outcome-driven care. She highlights the shortcomings of the current system, which often prioritizes the volume of services delivered over actual health outcomes.

We are excited to welcome Tyler Meredith, Senior Economic Advisor for the Canadian federal government who helped deliver 6 federal budgets. Tyler explains how federal budgets work, what they mean, and who is involved in their creation. We also dive into the unique job of allocating funds to healthcare – from how cancer care ranks in the federal budget-making, to how the government balances its short-term fiscal responsibility and its long-term investments in different sectors of Canadian government and society.

We are thrilled to welcome Dr Shirin A. Enger! She is an associate professor at the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology at McGill University and the director of the medical physics unit. Dr Enger shares how she began her career, from being inspired by Marie Curie as a child in her small town in Sweden, to building an interdisciplinary, innovative, and successful research program in Montreal encompassing AI, medical physics, engineering and more.

This week’s special guest is Aaron Leibtag, CEO and Co-founder of the Canadian AI health technology company Pentavere. Aaron dives into the challenges he and his colleagues have faced in creating his company, and gives some advice to listeners on starting a business. Aaron also explains how AI can be a vital tool in the health technology space, where mountains of data need to be moved to improve outcomes for patients.

In this episode, we’re thrilled to welcome Tim Errington, Senior Director of Research at the Center for Open Science in Virginia. Tim’s organization is dedicated to making the scientific research process more transparent, open, and effective. One key approach they use is replicating studies to ensure accuracy and reliability.

In this episode, we spoke with Joan Paulin, super patient advocate for rare diseases. Joan’s daughter suffers from pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a rare form of pulmonary hypertension (PH), which has led Joan down the path of making sure that the patient’s voice is heard.

Currently, Joan serves as the Board Vice-Chair of Pulmonary Hypertension Association of Canada and a member of CDA-AMC Post Market Drug Evaluation (PMDE) Advisory Committee.

On this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Catalina Lopez-Correa, Chief Scientific Officer at Genome Canada as well as our excellent guest co-host Suzan McNamara, Chief Operations Officer at Exactis Innovation‬! Both Catalina and Suzan are not only distinguished professionals in the scientific community but also courageous survivors of cancer. Through their stories, we learn how their firsthand experience with cancer have shaped their perspectives and fueled their dedication to advancing medical research.

Chere Chapman is CEO of Ardea Outcomes, a Canadian CRO specializing in goal attainment scaling, a patient-centered outcomes research methodology. Our hosts, Kostas and Lester, chat with Chere about what goal attainment scaling can do in clinical trials for both the patient and clinician, and how this methodology could improve our knowledge of what patients experience during clinical research.

With national pharmacare closer to reality in Canada, our insightful conversation with market access professionals and seasoned pharmacists, Sang Mi Lee and Brian O’Rourke, sheds light on the intricacies of Canada’s drug reimbursement system and how it might evolve with the recent creation of the Canadian Drug Agency (CDA).

Sang Mi is Director of Innovative Access Solutions at Morse Consulting, and former senior manager & senior pharmacist pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance. Brian is President of ‪ISPOR‬ and former CEO ‪of CADTH.

Kostas and Lester speak with Dr. Natasha Leighl — medical oncologist and mentor to many — from the ‪University Health Network Toronto (‪Princess Margaret Cancer Centre‬) and professor at ‪University of Toronto‬. Their conversation covers the importance of Real World Evidence and Real World Data, the challenges and triumphs that come with them, plus her are a of expertise, liquid biopsies.

Happy Holidays! Our hosts Kostas and Lester wrap up the year by talking about the stand-out moments of the podcast so far. Thanks for listening!

Our hosts Kostas Trakas and Lester Poon sit down with Barry D. Stein, CEO of Colorectal Cancer Canada, and superstar in the world of cancer patient advocacy. He shares his fascinating journey with colorectal cancer, beginning with his own diagnosis while working as a young lawyer, to later suing the Quebec government for reimbursement of medical costs incurred from treatments that eventually led him to remission. All of this inspired Barry to pursue his important work helping other Canadians get the best treatment possible when faced with a similar diagnosis.

Our hosts sit down with Tarry Ahuja, PhD from CADTH to discuss the exciting uses of real-world evidence in Canada. Tarry is the Director of the Post Market Drug Evaluation (PMDE) Program at CADTH and leads the CoLab network. Tarry joins us to celebrate the one year anniversary of CoLab and share learnings over the last year. CoLab is CADTH’s new network that uses RWE to answer healthcare decision makers’ questions. In his spare time away from the bat cave, Tarry gives back to his alma mater by teaching health psychology to the next generation of scientists at Carleton University. In this episode, we also learn more about Tarry’s journey to health technology assessment from his days as an aspiring rapper and Cirque de Soleil performer.

In our third episode of What’s with RWE, Kostas and Lester dive deep into several hot topics in RWE today: What’s in CADTH’s new RWE reporting guidelines? How exactly does the drug reimbursement process work in Canada? What are outcome based agreements (OBAs), and does their rise mean the end of patient support programs (PSPs)? Our hosts share their knowledge and experience in these topics, and shed light on the future of RWE in the Canadian healthcare landscape.

Today on What’s With RWE, Kostas and Lester sit down with Dr. Gerald Batist, Chief Medical Officer at Exactis Innovation and Director of the Segal Cancer Centre at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. They talk about the impact of Real World Evidence and data on oncology treatments, and ask how RWE, as well as AI, could change Oncology.

What is Real World Evidence and how does it impact oncology? Today Kostas and Lester introduce themselves and talk about RWD and RWE and how it’s impacting the field of oncology. They also discuss their experiences at ISPOR. They touch on CADTH, Limited recommendations and where Canada stands with RWE. Can RWE improve cancer care? You be the judge after listening to today’s WWRWE. Welcome to What’s with RWE Episode 1.