In 2021, big data play a role in nearly everything we do. We might not know it, but companies around the world are collecting data around every stage of their business model. In fact, data have become such a valuable asset that many companies provide “free” services to consumers. Think Facebook. There has never been a fee for the social media platform because Facebook profits on the data it can harvest from your activity on the site.
Data are the future’s most important resource. Like oil, data have to undergo a lot of refinement before becoming useful to the end consumer. In the digital economy, every person with an internet connection is contributing to a mass accumulation of data each time they use a device. The key to turning data into actionable insights is analytics.
Pharma companies and regulatory bodies have already pulled data from a number of sources to help inform their decision making. Genomic data, clinical trial data, insurance claims, electronic health records and patient registries are all rich sources of valuable information. As time goes on, integration methods will improve and hopefully insights can be shared among actors in a way that will prevent needlessly duplicated efforts and instead, inspire collaboration.
TREND is a data analytics company, and the information we are passionate about making use of revolves around the patient voice. With the advent of Patient-Focused Drug Development, FDA has set out to “Better incorporate the patient’s voice in drug development and evaluation.”
Stakeholders don’t have to look hard to find the patient voice. Patients and advocates have been making use of the internet to connect and broadcast their stories for a long time. The information exists but distilling this massive amount of data into insights has yet to be perfected, or even widely used.
TREND Community is perfecting this kind of analysis. We believe that the patient voice is going to be an even more instrumental element of drug development in the future. We are committed to constant innovation to making our analytics engine the best in the industry. In doing so, we hope to amplify the voices of an underrepresented, yet essential, segment of the population.