Based on the Real-World Evidence Framework published by the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), this paper explores its methodological innovations and discusses the instructive value for healthcare insurance reimbursement decision-making in China. Against the backdrop of a global shift toward value-driven healthcare governance, real-world evidence (RWE) has become a key tool for addressing the limitations of randomized controlled trials and supporting strategic purchasing decisions by payers. The scientific generation and standardized application of RWE are therefore of paramount importance. The NICE framework is built upon three pillars: transparency, data suitability, and methodological rigor. It systematically constructs an application system for RWE. It improves the validity of causal inference in observational studies by advocating the "target trial emulation" approach and incorporates qualitative evidence to comprehensively assess patient experience and clinical implementation pathways. Practice has demonstrated the significant effectiveness of this framework for evaluating technologies in domains such as oncology, digital therapeutics, and rare diseases. Considering this, China, in the exploratory phase of leveraging RWE for the comprehensive value assessment of health technologies within its healthcare insurance decision-making, can focus on three key dimensions: strengthening data governance foundations, standardizing methodological norms, and clarifying implementation pathways, to build a localized RWE application system suited to the national context.
Key words
real-world evidence /
real-world data /
NICE framework /
healthcare insurance decision-making /
health technology assessment
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