PAREXEL International Corp. and Datavant, Inc., a healthcare technology company focused on enabling the secure de-identification and linking of healthcare datasets, have partnered to enhance clinical study design and operations, as well as the generation of real-world evidence. The collaboration aims to enable the linking of healthcare data from a variety of real-world and clinical study data sources to improve drug development and commercialization processes.
 
Datavant’s technology enables the linking of traditional healthcare data sources including electronic medical records (EMRs), claims, and diagnostics with additional emerging sources, such as genomics, socioeconomic data, data from wearable devices, behavioral data and more. The two companies also aim to advance hybrid study delivery to help life science companies more effectively generate evidence and demonstrate product value. 
 
PAREXEL’s four-pillared real-world data approach integrates data access, advanced technologies, data science capabilities, and clinical and consulting expertise. A recent report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by PAREXEL found that drugs developed using real-world data had a 21 percent higher likelihood of launch, and real-world data studies resulted in reduced recruitment time. The report also identified advanced data analytics - including sharing of data across established siloes – as a key enabler to innovation in drug development and commercialization. 
 
“As clinical study complexity increases, data-driven protocol design, optimized study operations, and the application of real-world data are critical to successful and safe drug development and commercialization. The exponential growth of healthcare data offers both an opportunity to incorporate this wealth of data into the clinical study processes and commercial evidence generation, and a challenge, given the disparate sources where a patient’s healthcare data may be contained,” said Jason Martin, corporate vice president, Global Data Operations, PAREXEL. “Partnering with Datavant will allow PAREXEL to optimize clinical studies and real-world evidence generation using techniques that represent a true inflection point in how information will be consolidated in our industry.”

“Data silos cause significant hurdles to utilizing healthcare data to improve patient care. Datavant’s technology offerings, coupled with PAREXEL’s wealth of expertise and years of experience in clinical study operations, real-world evidence generation, and working with multiple real-world data sources provide an opportunity to answer some of the most difficult questions in drug development and commercialization for the ultimate benefit of patients,” said Travis May, co-founder and chief executive officer, Datavant.