Real-world data: Policy issues regarding their access and use

Anirban Basu, Kirsten Axelsen, David C. Grabowski, David O. Meltzer, Daniel Polsky, David B. Ridley, Daniel Wiederkehr, Tomas J. Philipson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

As real-world data (RWD) in health care begin to cross over to the Big Data realms, a panel of health economists was gathered to establish how well the current US policy environment further the goals of RWD and, if not, what can be done to improve matters. This report summarizes these discussions spanning the current US landscape of RWD availability and usefulness, private versus public development of RWD assets, the current inherent bias in terms of access to RWD, and guiding principles in providing quality assessments of new RWD studies. Three main conclusions emerge: (1) a business case is often required to incentivize investments in RWD assets. However, access restrictions for public data assets have failed to generate a proper market for these data and hence may have led to an underinvestment of public RWDs; (2) Very weak empirical evidence exist on for-profit entities misusing public RWD data entities to further their own agendas, which is the basis for supporting access restrictions of public RWD data; and (3) perhaps developing standardized metrics that could flag misuse of RWDs in an efficient way could help quell some of the fear of sharing public RWD assets with for-profit entities. It is hoped that these discussions and conclusions would pave the way for more rigorous and timely debates on the greater availability and accessibility of RWD assets.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1038-1044
Number of pages7
JournalMedical care
Volume54
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • data access
  • health care decision-making
  • quality metrics
  • real-world data
  • regulations

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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