Health Care Partnership Could Help Access to Real World Data
September 23, 2014
By Amanda Conschafter, blog editor
Real world data could improve patient care and result in more targeted pharmaceutical innovation, a new Morning Consult blog post suggests. And if pharmaceutical manufacturers, policymakers and health care providers work together, they could overcome the biggest roadblock to putting real-world data into action: accessing the data itself.
Federal regulations present the biggest challenge to harnessing the power of real world data, because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) prohibit access to Medicare data for commercial purposes. But several groups, including the Healthcare Leadership Council, recently petitioned CMS on the grounds that such access could improve health care efficiency and effectiveness.
Under guidelines that protect patient and provider privacy, it is argued that collaboration could allow pharmaceutical companies to focus drug development on patient need. It could also allow health care providers to weigh treatment effectiveness based on patient response data. Several efforts to aggregate real world data are already underway, including states that are funding the development of All Payer Claims Databases to combine information from a range of insurers.
Meanwhile, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has begun to offer funding for patient organizations, such as Global Healthy Living Foundation, that record patient satisfaction and responsiveness to treatments. PCORI, the blog post notes, encourages its grant recipients to share information with pharmaceutical companies in hopes of their developing targeted therapies to improve patient health.
With more robust partnerships like these, industry can join health care providers and payers to achieve a balance between patient privacy and access to real-world information that improves health care delivery and informs pharmaceutical innovation.
Categorized in: Blog