Each year at the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Annual International Meeting, the Optum Life Sciences group hosts an educational symposium before the attending global researchers and thought leaders. At this year’s 18th ISPOR gathering, I’m pleased to moderate an important educational symposium to be held tomorrow titled, “Analyze This! Getting the Right Data for Research and Evidence Generation.” Participating with me are Lewis G. Sandy, MD, FACP, Senior Vice President, Clinical Advancement, United HealthGroup and Linus Jönsson, MD, MSc, PhD, Executive Vice President and Senior Scientist, Optum Life Sciences. They’ll be joined by Kevin Haynes, PharmD, MSCE, Senior Research Investigator and Adjunct Scholar and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at The Center of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Through this panel, our goal is to focus on the challenge of assembling the right data for the research question or evidence generation agenda in the current information technology, policy and regulatory environment. Panelists will explore different aspects of this topic, knowing that the practical ability to assemble the data required to address research hypotheses remains complex and sometimes elusive.
First, Dr. Sandy will discuss the interaction between health plans, research capabilities and external customers. He presents truly fascinating insight into how different groups have disparate perspectives and to get the best data for appropriate analysis, these groups must come together to promote high-value innovation in health care.
Second, Dr. Haynes will discuss distributed research networks and applications in safety and outcomes research, bringing his insight to the group from collaboration on Mini-Sentinel, a pilot project sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to create an active surveillance system – the Sentinel System – to monitor the safety of FDA-regulated medical products. Mini-Sentinel uses pre-existing electronic healthcare data from multiple sources.
And finally, Dr. Jönsson will discuss assembling data in non-US markets, as seldom are studies U.S.-only or European-only in their focus.
If you have any thoughts on this panel, we welcome your conversation at info@optum.com. We look forward to a rewarding and productive panel. For a full schedule of Optum’s contributions at the ISPOR meeting visit Optum.com
