Our webinar on Real World Data in Australia and New Zealand – the second in the Health Data Passport global webinar series – provided valuable insights into the rich data assets available in the region and how those assets are being used globally.

Growing Interest in Australian & New Zealand Health Data

The health data ecosystems of Australia and New Zealand have gained attention from global healthcare companies for several reasons. First, expedited application pathways exist for clinical studies in the region, making the process quicker compared even to other mature markets. Second, the population makeup of the region is diverse, with people originating from different continents and cultural backgrounds – an advantage that offers additional depth and insight compared to more homogeneous countries. Finally, the industry has access to a variety of rich and diverse high-quality data assets and sources across the country, which makes the data useful for a variety of different types of research across the entire product life cycle.

Access to High Quality Patient Data Assets

One of the key themes in the Australia-New Zealand Real World Data presentation was the excellent access to high-quality data assets accepted for regulatory and HTA submissions. Senior Consultant Ken Chin from IQVIA Australia, specializes in the strategic design and execution of observational research studies across established and innovative methodologies using data from Australia and New Zealand and provided insights into the data features, client experiences, and an overview of available RWD data assets.

Rapid Data Landscaping

The webinar also showed the power and effectiveness of IQVIA’s Health Data Catalog (IHDC) for finding and evaluating the datasets from the region. The IHDC is a global metadata repository hosting over 3,400 health data assets profiles across more than one hundred countries. This unique agnostic catalog enables users to identify assets of interest based on various metadata dimensions and characteristics to find the best Real World Datasets available for any research study.

Leveraging Australian and New Zealand Data

The online seminar speakers highlighted that data assets in Australia and New Zealand are being leveraged by clients to demonstrate unmet medical needs, understand patient characteristics, treatment patterns, and prescribers' prescribing patterns. It showed how RWD can be used to:

• Capture new insights into patients’ conditions and their corresponding treatments within primary care
• Advance commercial growth with timely longitudinal data on patient treatments and prescribers within retail dispensed markets When combined with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML), it can effectively and efficiently resolve many commercial and clinical research challenges

Diving into Australian EMR and LRx Datasets

During the webinar, the discussion on GP EMR data and LRx data emphasized the value of these data sets in addressing research questions across the product lifecycle. The GP EMR data, capturing 5.2 million individual patients’ medical data, provides comprehensive information on patient demographics, clinical characteristics, diagnoses, prescriptions, and more. Whereas the expansive LRx dataset covers about 75% of scripts dispensed through retail pharmacies in Australia, offering longitudinal data on patient prescriptions and diagnoses.

Extracting Insights with AI and Machine Learning

The webinar highlighted how clients have leveraged these data sets for epidemiological modeling, understanding treatment patterns, and estimating market size for products. The use of machine learning and advanced analytics technologies to extract value from Real World Data was also discussed. Machine learning models were also recommended as a powerful and effective way to bridge data gaps, predict patient outcomes, and uncover hidden trends and patterns in the data.

Example Use Case Demonstrations

The webinar concluded with a demonstration of use case scenarios using Australia and New Zealand data. These scenarios focused on diabetes, COPD, and cardiovascular disease, displaying how tools like the Health Data Catalog, Cohort Builder, and Analytic Workbench can be used to generate insights and improve healthcare outcomes, and are available in the content hub – a repository of related materials and assets that is updated with new content after each webinar.

Key Webinar Takeaways

The webinar provided a comprehensive overview of the power of Real World Data in Australia and New Zealand and how it can be leveraged to drive strategic decision-making and improve patient outcomes. It showed how Australia and New Zealand's healthcare ecosystems offer advantages to clients in terms of faster clinical studies, diverse populations, and high-quality data assets and how:

• Companies can leverage deep Australian Real World Data to demonstrate unmet medical needs among populations of interest, investigate treatment patterns and patient adherence, and examine and compare clinical outcomes.
• Researchers can use RWD to contextualize clinical trial results to Real World clinical practice settings. In current trends, Real World Data in the local market is used to assess the feasibility of running a clinical trial and whether there are sufficient patients for proposed trials.
• Consumer health companies can leverage primary care data to evaluate GPS prescribing patterns of OTC products, including nutraceuticals and supplements.

To follow the webinar Series, or for more insights go to the Health Data Passport content hub.