What Claims Data Is Missing for Real-World Evidence Generation and How EHR Data Fills the Gap
Author:
Verana Health
The pharmaceutical industry is at a crossroads, facing rising costs and declining returns on investment (ROI). The cost to bring new drugs to market now exceeds $2 billion. Simultaneously, ROI has plummeted by 62%, hitting an all-time low of 1.2%. These escalating costs and unfavorable returns present significant obstacles, but there is a solution, and it lies in quality real-world data (RWD) from electronic health records (EHRs).
To truly gain an advantage, life sciences companies must leverage comprehensive RWD – particularly from electronic health records (EHRs) – to generate powerful real-world evidence (RWE).
Traditionally, claims data has been the workhorse, offering glimpses into treatment choices over time. However, in today’s fiercely competitive environment, claims data alone is no longer enough. To truly gain an advantage, life sciences companies must leverage comprehensive RWD – particularly from electronic health records (EHRs) – to generate powerful real-world evidence (RWE).
Claims Data vs. EHR Data: Why Claims Data Falls Short
Claims data, which includes information on healthcare services and medications, can be helpful for certain purposes. However, it has the following limitations:
- Delayed insights
- Limited clinical context
- Incomplete patient journey
- And more!
View the white paper for details!
Benefits of EHRs and Real-World Data
EHRs are a rich source of RWD, encompassing a patient’s medical history, symptoms, diagnoses beyond what is captured in ICD codes, comorbidities, lab results, and clinical outcomes. They typically capture core patient information in standardized formats, similar to claims data.
EHRs and real-world data also capture patient information in unstructured formats, such as clinical notes, where clinicians document their observations, assessments, and treatment plans. This valuable unstructured data offers a deeper understanding of a patient’s condition and experience.
How EHRs Inform Real-World Evidence
By applying AI techniques, such as machine learning and natural language processing, models can continuously monitor and analyze vast amounts of de-identified patient data from EHRs, extracting vital information from clinical notes to derive insights into disease progression, treatment, and outcomes.
The benefits of EHRs are immense, but extracting insights from unstructured data – using traditional methods – is labor-intensive in that it requires manual searches. However, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have revolutionized healthcare data analysis.
By applying AI techniques, such as machine learning and natural language processing, models can continuously monitor and analyze vast amounts of de-identified patient data from EHRs, extracting vital information from clinical notes to derive insights into disease progression, treatment, and outcomes.
AI also enables the development of a data-driven taxonomy, which identifies keywords and language patterns associated with specific clinical cues. This curated data is carefully analyzed and categorized, creating a framework for understanding diseases, treatment approaches, and longitudinal outcomes.
Verana Health applies these AI techniques to create datasets for a variety of conditions, such as geographic atrophy and prostate cancer. These advancements in AI have transformed the analysis of unstructured data from EHRs and RWD, offering valuable insights and opportunities for informed decision-making.
A Future Powered by RWD
The healthcare industry is experiencing a data explosion, generating an exponential amount of information. The comparison is clear between EHRs vs. claims data. EHRs include a wealth of information that can provide a more comprehensive view of the patient journey. To be truly competitive, life sciences companies must tap into these rich RWE insights, which can only be discovered by analyzing EHR data.
Through exclusive partnerships with leading medical societies, Verana Health leverages an exclusive RWD network of 90 million de-identified patients from 20,000 clinicians. Its deep expertise, advanced technology, and direct access to near real-time data produce actionable, high-quality RWD to help life sciences companies transform patient lives.For additional details on the power of RWE and EHRs, and to view examples of how Verana Health is helping organizations reimagine what’s possible by going beyond traditional claims data, download the white paper.
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