Reflecting on Medlior’s successes and how our predictions for 2019 panned out
2019 has been defined as a year of amazing growth and new highs for the team at Medlior Health Outcomes Research. This year has seen some incredible achievements including:
Recipient of the Women Entrepreneurship Fund
Medlior is incredibly proud to have been awarded the inaugural Women Entrepreneurship Fund by the Government of Canada. This unique fund provides recipients with up to $100,000 with the goal of addressing women’s economic empowerment. We are excited to be using this fund to travel to European conferences to exhibit our services and present our research. It will also allow us to further develop our proprietary online tool, Real World Radar, to enhance future research opportunities with Real World Data. Lastly, we are hiring more graduates from the universities in Calgary to support our increased volume of work.
Canadian Journal of Cardiology Publication
We were proud to see our research included in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology press release on cholesterol-lowering drugs that are under-prescribed for prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. In this large retrospective study, we identified a significant treatment gap in managing patients in Alberta with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
ISPOR Award Finalist
Last, but certainly not least, we were delighted that Medlior was selected as an ISPOR EU 2019 Research Presentation Award finalist for our poster presentation on Canadian Real-World Evidence in Epidemiology Outcomes and Economics of Moderate-to-Severe Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Literature Review.
Predictions for 2019 – How’d We Do?
At the beginning of this year we set out some predictions for what we thought we’d see in 2019 in regards to upcoming initiatives in the healthcare industry. Here are some highlights of how our predictions panned out.
RWE Data Collection
We said that a proposed Health Canada and CADTH framework may support the funding and development of post-authorization RWE data collection, such as patient registries, to inform decision-makers and address uncertainty from clinical trials.
This may still come to pass, however, the RWE strategy from CADTH and Health Canada’s “Core Action Team,” was supposed to be released in the fall of 2019, but is still pending.
Increased Utilization of Digital Tools
We said there would be increasing utilization of “Patient-generated data” and innovation for digital tools to capture patient data from unique, community-based sources, such as apps and social media.
There have been some exciting developments in this area that have really showed the value of patient generated data including Pfizer and BMS partnership with FitBit and Johnson and Johnson partnership with Apple Watch.
Health System Disruption
We said the approval of CAR-T and cell therapies will likely cause massive disruption in terms of implementation. Partnerships between manufacturers, providers and the health system is mandatory for the uptake of these therapies into routine clinical practice.
This has been shown to be true with an increasing number of CAR-T and gene therapies coming to market with exciting partnerships between researchers and innovative companies, like this recent major private-public partnership led by Harvard and MIT.
Increase in Outcome-Based Agreements and RWE
We said price negotiations will likely see an increase in outcomes-based agreements to offset the costs for innovative medicines. Payers will need to guide the RWE requirements to support these agreements, but there are several important considerations prior to generating actionable data. Issues may include: lack of standardization of data elements and methodology, collaborations across jurisdictions for data pooling (particularly important for rare diseases), accurate and meaningful reporting of results to inform decision-makers who may not be well-versed in observational data.
Outcomes-based agreements and RWE are slowly becoming a reality as many countries start to address issues with data quality, privacy, governance and infrastructure.
We can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store for Medlior and the healthcare industry. Are you interested in learning more about any of this research, or in how Medlior can help with your next project? Contact us today!