According to a study by Best Practices, LCC, the medical affairs function in the pharmaceutical industry can utilize Big Data relating to medical records, clinical trial data and claims information to get key insights related to therapies and patients.
Specifically, the pharmaceutical sector has used Big Data to help with drug development. Pharma realizes the potential that Big Data can offer when it comes to insights on aiding biomarker discovery or providing knowledge on a disease.
The Best Practice study provided current trends and best practices when incorporating Big Data into the pharma industry. Their study, “Big Data in Pharma: Current & Future Trends for Big Data Utilization Across Medical Affairs Functions,” addresses issues that analytics and medical leaders often discuss.
One of these core issues is whether Big Data should be a centralized or decentralized function or group. A little over 50 percent of the study participants said they have a centralized group, or a Big Data team, to support Big Data projects, according to PR Newswire.
Additionally, the study found that medical segment participants said post-launch studies dealing with product use and health outcomes were the most common conducted Big Data projects. The majority of participants also said that partnerships with payers, health systems and data aggregators were useful and impactful.
Other insights provided in the study offered analytical components of pharma-related Big Data programs such as:
- Types of Big Data projects and data being used
- Types of data being used for specific medical Big Data projects
- Data types and sources most valuable
- How companies are organizing their Big Data efforts
- Who the most useful partners for Big Data projects are
The survey included 12 medical affairs leaders from 11 pharmaceutical companies.
