Data is essential for health service improvements, drug discovery, and “everything that we do in the health system,” Health iQ chief commercial officer, Hassan Chaudhury, told delegates at Pharma Integrates last week.
Health iQ is a UK-based company that offers real world data insight services to life science firms.
“We’ve got aging populations, we’ve got polypharmacy, we’ve got multimorbidity. [Without data] we are unable to cope with the growing health burden that is going to hit us in the next few years,” he added.
The UK is in a strong position to collect and protect patient information, he continued: “We should be taking advantage of the advances in data science and artificial intelligence to make the most of what we have.
“We're lucky, particularly in this country, to have what is as close as we can get to the best data available in the world for our health system.”
Tabloid fear mongering?
However, there is ‘a real danger’ threatening data collection, and more specifically, how much data is collected through government health services and clinical research, according to Chaudhury: “The obstacle is [UK tabloid journalism] that says we should have access to that data.”
Rather, “we all need access to that data in the most appropriate way,” he continued. “I’d like to highlight…that the conversation on limits on data collection is a bogus and fake conversation. It’s a red herring.”
“The conversation here is ‘how do we prevent us going backwards at a time when data is still vital, and our capacity and capability of handling those data sets has improved?’” he added.
At the London conference, Najib Rehman, data strategy lead of FarmaTrust – a global tracking service for the pharma industry – agreed with Chaudhury that focus should extend beyond collection limits: “I do think [focusing on limiting data collection] is a red herring, I think minimisation is a false argument.
“[Increased data collection] is happening anyway, where we like it or not, the horse has bolted here,” he told delegates.
‘Intelligent’ measures
Thomas Kelley, clinical advisor of Value-Based Health Care, NHS Wales, however, did not agree that focusing on collection limits is a ‘red herring’ or a ‘Daily Mail’ issue.
“I also don’t agree that we should just be collecting and getting as much [data] as possible. I think we have to use the data, which means we have to be intelligent about it and try to collect [it] in a way that [enables us to easily] use it,” Kelley told delegates.
“We do have to minimise what we capture, because the vast amounts that we have at the moment, we are not using,” he added.