The National Assessment and Decision-Making Model for Medicines Will be Developed Gradually by 2029
Finland is currently developing a national assessment and decision-making model for medicines.
Medaffcon Explored Transportability of Evidence Between Finland and the United States
When local evidence is insufficient to support decision-making, research findings and real-world evidence generated elsewhere may help fill the gap. Johanna Vikkula, Senior Data Scientist at Medaffcon, discussed the topic at the EMMA customer event on 30 September.
Senior Data Scientist Johanna Vikkula presented the concepts of transportability and generalisability. Transportability refers to assessing the extent to which results generated in one patient population or healthcare system can be applied to another setting. Generalisability, in turn, describes how well study findings hold beyond the original study population in a similar population.
The goal of transportability is not to replace local evidence but to complement it when evidence is unavailable or limited. For example, a Finnish patient cohort may be too small to support robust conclusions, while comparable evidence may be available elsewhere. In such cases, the key question is whether those findings can be meaningfully applied in Finland.
Comparison of Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Data
As a case example, Vikkula presented a comparison conducted by Medaffcon and Flatiron Health in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC). The analysis examined differences between patient populations across countries, the comparability of treatment practices, the availability of relevant variables, and whether findings from the United States could be transferred to the Finnish context.
“The cohorts are largely well aligned, although there are differences in some clinical characteristics. For example, chemotherapy remains widely used as a first-line treatment in Finland, whereas this is not the case in the United States. The findings do not suggest that transportability is not feasible, but unadjusted results cannot be directly applied to Finland. Whether the results are transportable depends on how well the cohorts can be balanced,” says Vikkula.
What matters is not whether data across national borders, but rather the extent to which differences between the source and target settings influence the study outcomes. In this way, international evidence can complement the existing evidence base and help reduce uncertainty.
Multiple Factors Influence Transportability
Several factors are critical when assessing transportability, including differences in patient characteristics, treatment practices and care pathways, healthcare systems, and the quality and collection methods of the data.
As experience and methodological knowledge continue to accumulate, the practical value of transportability is becoming clearer. Put simply, transportability asks what the evidence generated in one population can reliably tell us about outcomes or treatment effects in another, clearly defined target population.
This article highlights the key takeaways from Johanna Vikkula’s EMMA 2026. Download the presentation material below:
