Overview
What It Is
The Oncology Evidence Network is a research network of Europe's larger cancer hospitals working with IQVIA to provide high quality, real world data reflecting the latest clinical practice. Enabled by the IQVIA CORE, it is set up to simplify delivery of up-to-date real world evidence. Datasets are updated daily at each hospital, ensuring insights reflect current oncology care across Europe.
The OEN brings together more than 40 European hospital centers of excellence in oncology. In collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry, this network leads projects based on real-world data to accelerate therapeutic innovation.
Origins — The Oncology Data Network (ODN)
The OEN grew out of an earlier initiative called the Oncology Data Network (ODN), described in a 2020 paper in The Oncologist (Woolmore et al., PMC7543245). This provides the most detailed public description of the underlying methodology:
The ODN is a cooperative collaborative European data-sharing platform providing near real-time information on cancer medicine usage at scale. Open to all European cancer centers, all cancer patients, and all cancer types, the ODN aims to create an extensive infrastructure of real-world cancer care information. iqia
As of October 2019, the ODN was established across over seven European countries — including Austria, Belgium, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain — with 124 cancer centers caring for an estimated 92,000 patients annually. iqia
Data Infrastructure & Technology
To fulfill the ambitious objective of delivering continuous analyses of European oncology practice within only 24 hours from "clinic to insight," and in accordance with GDPR, the initial dataset focuses on cancer medicine use. A Core Regimen Reference Library (CRRL) was compiled, creating a means of codifying treatment regimens used in clinical practice and mapping them against guidelines. It works with a common data model that translates data from diverse sources across Europe in auditable ways into a common language.
Data extraction was built around three goals: to unify and integrate fragmented data across hospitals; to use technology-enabled automation to minimize impact on hospital resources; and to work seamlessly with existing hospital IT systems, preserving sites' ability to use existing information technology setups.
Relevance to Gynecologic Cancer
The network is described as open to all cancer types, so gynecologic cancers — ovarian, endometrial, cervical — are in scope. However, it is important to note several limitations for gyne cancer research specifically:
- The primary focus is on cancer medicine use (treatment patterns, drug utilization) rather than genomic profiling or deep clinical annotation
- The dataset is designed for real-world treatment pattern analysis, health economics, and outcomes research — more relevant to post-approval drug evaluation and market access questions than to molecular research
- It is a commercial/pharmaceutical industry-facing resource, not an open-access research database — access is through engagement with IQVIA
- There are no published gyne-cancer-specific studies from this network in the publicly available literature
Notes
European hospital network with onsite teams. 138M patients curated globally across IQVIA platforms.