February 4, 2019 — Pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations have zettabytes of data at their disposal, literally. They have spent the last decade accumulating information from electronic health records, insurance claims, lab results and more. Whatever frustrations one might have with the industry at large, it can’t reasonably be suggested that companies were caught unaware by the data and analytics revolution. If anything, they have veered in the direction of over-collection and analysis.
Thus for a data-centric initiative to capture the industry’s attention and imagination, it has to be spectacular — not just in terms of scientific advancement, but in terms of upending existing schemes and processes. And last April’s label expansion for Pfizer’s breast-cancer drug Ibrance, which was based on real-world data from off-label use of the drug in male breast-cancer patients, checked all the boxes. The data for the approval was culled from three sources: Flatiron Health’s breast cancer database, IQVIA’s insurance database and Pfizer’s global safety database
