SUBSCRIBE
IQVIA Blog Digest
For all the latest industry insights, please subscribe to the IQVIA U.S. blog digest.
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
A-I
J-Z
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
Regions
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
-
Middle East & Africa
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
Europe
- Adriatic
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Czech Republic
- Deutschland
- España
- France
- Greece
- Hungary
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italia
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
WHO WE HELP
-
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
-
Emerging Biopharma
-
MedTech
-
Financial Institutions
-
Government and Public Health
-
Health Plans
-
Hospital and Health Systems
-
Insurers and Risk
-
Medical Specialty and Patient Advocacy
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
Harness unparalleled healthcare data, advanced analytics, and cutting-edge technologies with our expertise to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative medicines, enhancing patient lives.
Harness DataPharmaceutical Manufacturers
Emerging Biopharma (Global page)
Boost your innovation with IQVIA's expert team. Our comprehensive solutions integrate top-tier insights, technology, and expertise to maximize your asset's success in a competitive landscape.
Discover InnovationsMedTech
Navigating MedTech's unique landscape: U.S. decision-making now rests with GPOs, IDNs, and payers, who demand solid value proof through rigorous outcomes analyses and pricing scrutiny.
Explore MedTechMedTech
Financial Institutions
Invest in healthcare with confidence. Stay ahead of pharma and medical device trends using real-time, high-quality data. Access market insights, historical sales, prescription trends, and emerging product information for informed, risk-reduced decisions.
Access InsightsGovernment and Public Health
Unlock deeper health insights with unmatched data and innovative technology to enhance decision-making for your essential government programs.
Unlock InnovationsGovernment and Public Health
Health Plans
Accelerate digital innovation with our data-driven expertise in data science and healthcare, optimizing business processes for smarter decisions.
Navigate Health PlansHospital and Health Systems
Leverage digital innovation to cut costs, boost efficiency, and elevate patient engagement, all while enhancing quality and health outcomes.
Streamline DecisionsHospital and Health Systems
Insurers and Risk
Enhance your ability to evaluate and forecast population risk swiftly and accurately by integrating unmatched data, expertise, and technology.
Evaluate Risk
Medical Specialty and Patient Advocacy
Transform into a data-driven organization that enhances your specialty and showcases value to your members through digital transformation.
Enhance Your SpecialtyU.S. PROGRESS POINT
A curation of IQVIA's best thinking on topics and trends driving change, disruption, and progress in the United States healthcare market.
LEARN MOREBLOGS, WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES
Explore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.
DISCOVER INSIGHTS
PODCASTS
"Discover the future through our enlightening podcasts available in the United States.
EXPLORE PODCASTSBlog
Is Your Real World Data Credible? Part 2 in a series
How to identify the right set of data sources to address stakeholders' broad evidence needs
Mar 08, 2021
In part one of this blog series, IQVIA experts detailed the various real world evidence credibility frameworks. The second and final blog in this series, will uncover how to identify the right data.
Know your stakeholders and their evidence needs
A successful real world evidence (RWE) strategy should credibly answer the questions that will inform the decision-making process. First and foremost, it is important to understand who the stakeholder is that real world data (RWD) are being generated for. As part of this, it is critical to answer the following:
- What are the most pressing clinical or business issues for this stakeholder?
- What is the market context?
- What evidence best addresses these issues?
- How can the evidence strategy evolve to account for a dynamic market landscape?
Clearly articulating the stakeholder’s current and long-term RWE needs will help determine the type of evidence that will inform decision making.
Identify your real world data sources
Many clinical and business questions can be answered by analyzing de-identified medical and pharmacy claims data. But depending on the research questions and patient population of interest, claims data are limited in the granularity and depth of clinical insights that can be generated. For these reasons, it is important to consider a broad range of data sources to address research questions and stakeholder needs (FIGURE 1).
Figure 1: The RWD value chain addresses evidence needs through a multi-sourced platform of healthcare data sources.
Additional RWD sources may include electronic medical records (EMRs), registries, labs and diagnostic data, genomic data, consumer data, patient reported outcomes (PRO) data from survey instruments, and actigraphy data from wearable devices.
Each of these data sources may provide information on different parameters of interest for the stakeholder. Some data sources may analyze as standalone data sets, and other data may be linked to provide richer context and longitudinal analysis of patients throughout their care journey, in different healthcare settings over time.
Multiple data sources are often required and integrated to address stakeholder needs
To address a broad set of research questions of interest around effectiveness, safety, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and economic impact, a single RWD set is rarely sufficient. The true value of RWD comes from being able to connect disparate data sources, and in doing so, unlocking a more holistic picture of the patient journey. However, integrating these data sources presents several challenges.
- Linkage: This is the connecting of appropriate patient records across disparate data sources while maintaining compliance with patient privacy regulation. In the United States, you may be able to link RWD sources into a unified data set, but General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) considerations in the European Union may limit how the information can be used or accessed.
- De-identification: In order to comply with patient privacy regulations (e.g. HIPAA, GDPR), privacy concerns are a key consideration, and tokenization may provide a way to gather data in a de-identified manner that is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
- Tokenization: This process transforms the information into a random string of characters that have no meaningful value apart from the mapping system. This allows for the transport of data in a format that protects patient privacy in case of a breach while permitting researchers to access the information.
- Data harmonization/standardization: Alignment of data structures, terms, definitions, and code lists across disparate data sources may necessitate transformation and standardization of data. Common data models exist that can be used to streamline feasibility and statistical analyses across multiple disparate data sets.
Summary
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, having an effective RWE strategy has taken on a new urgency. Carefully curated RWE can empower stakeholders, leveraging existing or bespoke RWD to enrich submission packages or drive corporate decisions. Data sources should be robust enough to enable accurate selection of a target patient population in sufficient quantities to meet sample size needs, capturing data in an accurate and timely manner, that is acceptable to regulators and payers. The linchpin for successfully executing RWD analysis is to clearly define the research questions and then evaluate different data sources based on their ability to provide credible answers.
A comprehensive, thoughtful analysis of RWD sources will ensure that stakeholder needs are exceeded.
If you missed the first post in this real world blog series that focuses on credibility frameworks, you can read it here.
Harness the Power of Real World Evidence
Interested in how the IQVIA Real World Solutions team can help improve the quality and impact of your real world evidence studies?