Latest news with #realworlddata
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
datma Launches Federated Biomarker Explorer with Free Access to Help Pharma Validate Real-World Data Coverage
Pharma teams can now assess biomarker coverage across datma's federated network with no cost, contracts, or IT support required. BEAVERTON, Ore., July 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- datma, a leader in federated real-world data access, today announced the launch of the Federated Biomarker Explorer, a new application that allows pharmaceutical teams to evaluate real-world biomarker coverage across datma's federated network of participating data contributors before entering into a formal data partnership. This tool is designed to help teams answer a critical question early in the data sourcing process: Does this dataset contain the patient populations we need? The Federated Biomarker Explorer provides aggregate, cohort-level visibility into biomarker presence across the datma federated network. Teams can filter by a range of clinical and demographic attributes to assess feasibility. No data integration, procurement involvement, or internal IT support is required, making the application immediately accessible for teams looking to validate coverage before taking the next step. If alignment is found between datma's network and a team's target population, users can choose to link their own data to conduct a formal overlap analysis. This is done securely, without centralizing or transferring sensitive patient-level data. "Pharma teams often find themselves committing time and resources into exploratory conversations or technical scoping before they can even determine whether a dataset is relevant," said Robin Edison, the VP of Product at datma. "This tool lets users quickly answer the question: is this data feasible for my use case?" The launch supports datma's broader goal of reducing friction in real-world data collaboration by making the evaluation process faster and lower risk. Instead of requiring lengthy intake processes just to understand what's in a dataset, the Federated Biomarker Explorer offers visibility and usability from the start. "We believe access should begin with clarity," said Noah Nasser, CEO of datma. "Teams shouldn't need to invest time, budget, or legal resources just to learn whether a dataset can support their goals." For users who identify a fit and choose to move forward, enables federated analysis across internal and external datasets without moving or centralizing sensitive information. This allows teams to augment their existing data with targeted real-world cohorts, helping address specific research or market access questions that fall outside the scope of their current assets. By filling gaps rather than replacing what's already in place, datma offers a faster, more efficient path to insights. The Federated Biomarker Explorer is now live and available to pharmaceutical and life sciences teams. To learn more or request access, visit About datma datma is transforming how healthcare is accessed and shared through a secure, federated ecosystem that enables collaboration between data custodians and data consumers. Headquartered in Beaverton, OR, datma's flagship platform, powers a two sided marketplace for real-world healthcare data that supports compliant, privacy-preserving collaboration without requiring data to move or sacrificing institutional control. leverages advanced data storage, AI-enabled tools for harmonizing multimodal datasets, and federated query capabilities. The platform is designed to maximize data utility while requiring minimal technical effort from participating organizations. It allows data custodians to generate secondary revenue streams and reinvest in innovation while maintaining control over their data, while helping data consumers access diverse, high-quality, de-identified data that augments existing datasets and supports evidence generation at scale. By addressing longstanding challenges in data access, privacy, and utility, supports the evidence generation needed to advance precision medicine. For more information, visit Media Contact:Vikki HerreraOak Street Communicationsvikki@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE datma, Inc Sign in to access your portfolio
Medscape
25-06-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Targeted- vs Immunotherapy in BRAF+ Stage III Melanoma
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Hello, everybody. My name is Teresa Amaral. Welcome back to this Medscape melanoma series. In the past four episodes, we talked a bit about adjuvant therapy in melanoma — what we have in terms of immunotherapy, the aspects that we need to consider, relapse-free survival data, distant metastasis-free survival data, and the absence of overall survival data. Today I'm going to discuss a little bit of the controversy that is ongoing in terms of what is the best therapy for patients who have a stage III melanoma and BRAF mutation. What kind of therapy in the adjuvant setting should we give to these patients? To address this question, we have recently published a review in terms of real-world data comparing these two therapies. Why did we do that? First, because these two therapies are approved for patients who have a BRAF mutation and there are no head-to-head comparisons that have been performed in clinical trials. Most likely, they will not be performed in the future because both therapies are approved in stage III; therefore, there is not really a big interest from the companies to perform this comparison in a head-to-head study. Because of that, we used a previous analysis based on a mathematical form where we visually compared the survival curves that have been published in real-world cohorts. This type of visual comparison has been published before to analyze stage IV systemic therapy, specifically immunotherapy and targeted therapy. The first publication was in 2017 in the European Journal of Cancer and the second was published in 2018 in the same journal. Basically, we used this strategy to also visually compare the different curves for immunotherapy and targeted therapy in stage III for patients with BRAF -mutated melanoma. We searched PubMed and other databases for articles that have published real-world data in this setting. We were able to include more than 3000 patients with a median follow-up that goes between 11 and 33 months. Approximately half of the patients, 57%, had a BRAF mutation. From these, approximately half of the patients had received treatment with a BRAF/MEK inhibitor, which gives us, at least from my point of view, a very good overview of the outcome of these patients treated with targeted- and immunotherapy. In total, we were able to retrieve 20 plus 32 publications. After the first review, we had 29 publications, excluding the duplicates. With further selection, we were able to have a total of eight studies that were included in this real-world analysis. We performed, as I said, a visual comparison between the two types of therapies, so immunotherapy and targeted therapy. The first analysis we performed was in terms of relapse-free survival. Here, we included nine publications in total. We see the relapse-free survival curves after 2 and 3 years, but from the very beginning, after 1 year, a difference that is visually better for targeted therapy. In this real-world data analysis, we saw that patients treated with targeted therapy seem to have a better benefit that is maintained, at least at 3 years, which is the last time that we performed this visual comparison. We also looked into the survival curves for immunotherapy and for targeted therapy in the different studies to make sure that patients treated with either therapy did not have a significantly different survival outcome. The curves are presented in the publication, and you can see that there is a significant overlap between the survival curves, showing that the patients treated in the different studies had a similar outcome. This is true both for targeted therapy and for immunotherapy. Why is this relapse-free survival analysis so important and why did we do this comparison? Both therapies were initially approved based on the relapse-free survival benefit that they showed for immunotherapy, and as we discussed in the previous episodes, there is still no overall survival benefit available. For targeted therapy we have overall survival benefit, but approval was based on relapse-free survival benefit. When we looked into the distant metastasis-free survival, we also saw that for patients treated with targeted therapy, the benefit was higher than for patients treated with immunotherapy. Here, we only had data from two publications; therefore, we cannot really have sound conclusions on what is better in terms of treatment for patients with BRAF -mutated stage III melanoma. Then we tried to do the analysis also for overall survival, but here again, we only had data from three publications; therefore, the comparisons cannot really be considered because the number of patients is quite low. Still, there is an overlap here, and the difference that we saw before in terms of benefit for distant metastasis-free survival and relapse-free survival favoring targeted therapy was not seen in this overall survival comparison.
Forbes
25-06-2025
- Health
- Forbes
The Data That Heals: How Real-World Data Is Rewriting Healthcare
Alex Bedenkov, VP, Global Evidence, BioPharmaceuticals Medical, AstraZeneca. Healthcare systems worldwide are facing unprecedented pressure, from the rise in chronic diseases and aging populations to fragmented healthcare and over-stretched resources. The result? Delayed, reactive and often inconsistent care, with too many patients diagnosed late and treated in emergency settings. But what if healthcare could work smarter, not just within hospitals or at a national level, but globally and across entire ecosystems? What if we could shift from reactive treatment to proactive, consistent and data-driven care? The key may already be in our hands: the systematic, equitable and extensive application of existing real-world data (RWD). Unlocking The Power Of RWD In Healthcare Today's healthcare systems are rich in data but poor in actionable insights. The problem isn't access to information; it's the underuse of this information, the siloed nature in which it exists and the disconnect between data and decision-making. Even promising pilot programs often fail to scale due to a lack of real-world evidence demonstrating their impact. RWD, generated from sources like electronic health records, disease registries and wearable devices, offers a solution. By integrating and analyzing real-time patient information across various settings, we can identify disease trends, uncover care gaps and intervene earlier, ultimately transforming how care is delivered. How Real-World Evidence Improves Healthcare Delivery When used strategically, RWD has the potential to shift care upstream, from hospitals to patients and communities, and from crisis response to prevention. Here's how: Diseases like heart failure and lung cancer are too often diagnosed at advanced stages. With tools like AI-powered screening algorithms, RWD can help to identify early warning patterns, enabling clinicians to diagnose and treat earlier, improving patient outcomes. Despite clinical guidelines being in place, many patients receive suboptimal or varied care depending on where they are treated. RWD helps bridge the gap between guidelines and real life—especially when paired with clinical decision-support tools. Patients frequently fall through the cracks of disconnected services. RWD enables healthcare systems to map patient journeys, uncover inefficiencies and build more integrated care pathways. Innovative pilot programs can stall due to difficulties in proving their value in practice. RWD helps support evaluation across diverse populations and settings, giving policymakers the data they need to drive the change for the better. Case Studies: Real-World Evidence Driving Impact Across the globe, RWD is already making a difference. RWE helps identify gaps between clinical guidelines and actual practice. A notable example is a study that used RWD to show that many patients with heart failure were not receiving guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT). This insight led to targeted interventions aimed at improving adherence to GDMT, ultimately enhancing patient outcomes. Such evidence supports health systems and payers in designing quality improvement programs and value-based care models. Looking at a firsthand example, our ecosystem in China now connects over 30 leading hospitals and millions of patient records. These near real-time insights into treatment gaps and disease trends are informing care decisions and national policy. Through collaborations with Peking University, local health commissions and hospitals, we aim to define new standards for evidence generation and shape new benchmarks for healthcare transformation. The Evolving Role Of Industry: From Providers To Partners This shift marks a broader change in the healthcare industry, from simply delivering medicines to becoming true partners in health system improvement. The pharmaceutical industry can: • Help identify the right patients for the right treatments. • Contribute to system-level solutions. • Collaborate with governments, payers and academic institutions in healthcare transformation. • Work with payers and policymakers to provide evidence-based models of care that are scalable and sustainable. These efforts go beyond short-term interventions—they're building blueprints for the future of healthcare. Making RWD A Strategic Priority To truly harness RWD, we must treat it as a strategic asset—central to designing better care, driving smarter policy decisions and empowering real-time learning across systems. This transformation will require public-private collaboration, patient-centered approaches and more effective population health strategies. The most obvious first step at the individual organization level is to conduct an internal audit of existing data assets, identifying gaps in data quality, interoperability and governance. Establishing cross-functional data stewardship teams, including but not limited to clinical, IT, legal and compliance stakeholders, ensures that RWD initiatives align with both operational goals and regulatory standards. Embedding RWD into strategic planning cycles, rather than treating it as a byproduct of healthcare delivery, helps shift the organizational mindset from reactive to proactive. One of the most notable challenges in this approach is overcoming siloed data systems and cultural resistance to data sharing. To address this, successful organizations have implemented phased integration roadmaps, starting with pilot projects that demonstrate quick wins, such as reducing hospital readmissions or improving medication adherence through predictive analytics. Best practices include investing in scalable data infrastructure, adopting common data models and fostering a culture of transparency and continuous learning. A truly patient-centric approach means involving patients not just as data sources, but as partners—through consent-driven data sharing, feedback loops and co-design of digital tools. Ultimately, treating RWD as a strategic asset requires a shift in both mindset and method, empowering organizations to deliver more personalized, equitable and efficient care. The Future Of Healthcare Is Data-Driven RWD offers a powerful opportunity to build more resilient, proactive and personalized healthcare systems. By aligning across sectors and leveraging real-time insights, we can create systems that don't just treat illness but anticipate it. Let's move from data to decisions and from decisions to better health for all. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
