Although prospective studies provide considerable information on the treatment behavior and the patterns of care, much of the same information can be gathered from reviews of patient’s medical records. With the advent of electronic medical records, it is increasingly easier to gain access to de-identified, accurate and complete information contained in patients’ records. It is important to recognize that since chart review is the most naturalistic, non-interventional approach, it may not yield all the desired evidence if the medical records do not contain the desired information.
ICON has extensive experience in the design and conduct of chart review studies that collect real-world data from patients’ medical charts. Through chart reviews, ICON has described clinical outcomes of patients who have been on specific therapies or who have received a specific type of care. Our extensive experience during the design phase of retrospective chart review studies has often led clients to seek our services in identifying the parameters needed to evaluate the research objectives of these studies. Our study execution has resulted in numerous publications, including reports of a large (10,000 charts) abstraction study in community oncology centers.