The Data Troubles that Specialty Pharma Makers Face

Every sector of healthcare is finding itself more and more data-dependent. The specialty pharmaceutical sector shares a big problem with the wider industry: incomplete datasets.

“When it's a specialty pharmaceutical that goes through a specialty pharmacy, for your patients you can see extremely robust and detailed data,” John Giannouris told Healthcare Analytics News™ in a recent interview. “As soon as it doesn't go through a specialty pharmacy…because it's being administered at a doctor's office or at a hospital, the ability to get access to patient data is limited. That's where that diversity and fragmentation of data comes in,” he said.

Giannouris is the VP of Specialty Pharma Products for ValueCentric. In response to a lack of data, he said, specialty pharma makers often end up turning to data aggregator companies like his own, which often themselves turn to syndicated data providers. Still, the risk of fragmentation remains.

“It's pieces of information, it’s not a complete picture,” he said. While disparate information can be linked back together—he calls the act of it an “art”—it is dependent on what the manufacturer is willing to pay to get access to the data and then have it synthesized.

“Syndicated data companies have been working on making their data more interoperable,” he said, but noted that the assembled data is not as robust as it could be. “Having a slice of data is important, but not the complete picture… there's still work to be done.”