Big data is creating opportunities that can help the pharma industry to develop and manufacture drugs more effectively. However, the sector faces a number of challenges in the way it manages and analyses the increasingly broad range of data that is available, and collaboration is essential for the industry to capitalise on the potential of the big data explosion. That was the key message from a Big Data in Pharma conference, organised by business information company SMi in London in May.
A key focus of the conference was real world data (RWD) – also referred to as real world evidence (RWE), which is generally used to describe data collected from a real-life setting – such as in a healthcare environment – in contrast to data from a clinical trial.
Rob Thwaites, Vice President of Health Economics and Epidemiology at life science strategist Evidera and Chair of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry’s pharma industry health information group, noted that a growing range of RWD is emerging that can be useful for the industry. He observed that there are increasing sources of healthcare data, such as electronic health records (EHR) – also called electronic medical records (EMR) – increasingly widely used by health organisations. These comprise electronic collections of health information about an individual patient or a country’s population, such as medical history, immunisation status, laboratory test results, radiology images and vital signs.
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