Big Data in the Pharmaceutical Industry

The news of Johnson and Johnson making clinical data available to Yale School of Medicine’s YODA project is a welcome move.

BIGdata

Fourteen years ago, the creation of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Foundation (DFWHC Foundation) was based on a similar core idea of centralizing patient data for storage and analysis. North Texas hospital systems created this combined data warehouse accessible to hospital participants as well as others. Today, the DFWHC Foundation securely houses the information of more than eight million regional patients and their more than 28 million hospital encounters within its claims data warehouse.

North Texas hospitals have been leveraging this incredible source of information to strengthen treatment strategies, quality, safety and economics. I personally applaud the vision of our North Texas healthcare leaders for the creation of this vital data warehouse.

The DFWHC Foundation welcomes this groundbreaking decision of Johnson and Johnson, as it becomes the first pharmaceutical company to make public its clinical trials data. This decision further highlights the need to combine and share data for analysis — a welcome transition from the normally conservative stance of the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to information exchange. We look forward to seeing other players from the industry coming forward with similar intentions.

Another important source of healthcare data would be the insurance industry. The DFWHC Foundation hopes this news will initiate discussion among insurance companies. Perhaps one day, they too will decide to share their enormous amount of healthcare information within their reservoir.

All of these positive initiatives will contribute to the rapidly-growing “Big Data” revolution. The DFWHC Foundation is looking forward to the future rejuvenation of the healthcare industry through Big Data.