The Future Of Health Data: A 2022 Life Sciences Industry Insights Report

The life sciences industry plays a pivotal role in discovering and developing treatments for patients. While innovation around the application of real-world data (RWD) is on the rise, a significant divide exists between organizations’ current use of RWD and their vision of how impactful it can be across the drug development lifecycle.

That’s according to a June 2022 national survey of 74 life sciences decision-makers and influencers. The survey, conducted independently by Sage Growth Partners on behalf of Datavant, found that while significant advancements in the use of RWD have occurred over the past few years—such as validation of clinical outcomes, support of value-based contracting, and basic optimizations of clinical trial protocol and study design—key barriers are inhibiting further innovation and real-world evidence (RWE) generation.

These barriers, explored in detail in this report, include challenges accessing and integrating high-quality RWD across multiple sources and important regulatory and ethical concerns around patient privacy.

This report also explores how life sciences leaders are thinking about addressing these barriers with new technologies and strategies, while keeping patient privacy at the forefront.

Industry leaders also look ahead to 2030 and share predictions on key advancements that will come from RWD. These predictions include:

• Accelerated diagnosis and treatments for rare diseases
• Greater number of RWD-based approvals for label-expansion
• Innovative funding models for high-value treatments
• Applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive precision medicine and accelerate drug development

The report outlines some major use cases, also based on the survey findings, to show the promise of RWD if life sciences companies harness the opportunities it presents.