Uncovering the Value of Real-World Data -- Why I started Sage Healthcare Insights (Sage HCI)

Weisman Art Museum / image credit: Jonathan Kurlander

I wanted to write this introductory article to explain why I started Sage HCI and touch upon some of the problems our team can solve.

A Human Imperative

When I look at a complex, beautiful structure like the Weisman Art Museum (pictured above), designed by the late, great Frank Gehry (who died 3 days ago at the age of 96), I always see something deeply human-like in its curving, almost struggling forms. Gehry was a disrupter who had to 'try stuff' to shake up architecture.

That vision -- of disruption and humanity -- is exactly what I see when I look at healthcare data. I've seen a lot of it, and in every data point, I don't just see the diagnoses, procedures, and the like; I see the people: worried families, struggling patients, and people simply waiting and hoping for more effective treatments.

This work is personal for me. I was once a younger man trying to make sense of why we could safely send a spacecraft to the moon but couldn't treat my mother's terminal cancer. I know many of you share a similar story. This is why harnessing Real-World Data (RWD) isn't just a technical challenge -- it's a human imperative.

Data Data Everywhere

Those of us in healthcare research and life sciences are working at the forefront of the data explosion currently reshaping healthcare. Published articles contain statistics on the staggering amount of data produced by healthcare organizations and cite healthcare as one of the most data-rich industries.[1] A robust market of real-world data (RWD) has emerged over the past 10-15 years. The players range from aggregators to bespoke curators, from normalization services to privacy services, and from 3rd party linking services to AI providers with rich offerings to organize, store and analyze data.[2]

Despite all of the innovations in the RWD market, I see two persistent problems:

1. Life sciences companies (i.e., pharma and biotech) still struggle to find the “right” data on the patients they need to conduct critical research.[3]

2. Health tech companies (e.g., app builders, sensor companies), healthcare companies (e.g., lab providers, diagnostic makers, medical devices), and health care[4] providers (e.g., hospitals and provider networks) have data that they could bring to life science companies, but don’t know all of what they have, what it’s worth, or what they have to do to make it “market-ready.”

I’ve drawn this conclusion based on 20 years of experience working inside the largest payer organization in the US, the largest data and trials provider to life sciences, as well as assorted data curators and providers. My first stop involved providing HEOR services to life science companies, assessing and cleaning RWD, developing tools to make data more accessible, and enhancing data products for research use. That’s where I started to see how the evolution to rare disease and advancement in types of measured outcomes required very specific data not easily found.

When I moved to the largest provider of clinical trials and RWD, I focused on building a repository of partners to bring to life sciences clients. In that role, I worked with scores of RWD providers and found that some of them (too many of them) did not understand what their data could really be used for and had not prepared it in a manner that could make it useful for clients they hoped to serve.

Finding the Needles in the Data Haystacks

My experience tells me that both sides of this market need help. Life sciences companies go to many RWD companies with feasibility exercises that too often fail to find the data they need. Others have a sizeable amount of internal data, yet they struggle to optimize its use across a portfolio or products. Small biotech companies require a Data Advisor and comprehensive data and analytic support to efficiently use their limited evidence generation budget. This expertise is crucial for combining trial data and Real-World Data (RWD) in a manner that satisfies regulatory requirements.

Healthcare organizations (HCOs) and Health Tech companies often face two distinct challenges with their data:

1. One challenge is Uncertain Value: They possess data they believe are valuable but lack the initial steps for evaluating their potential utility in the life sciences market.

2. The second challenge is Lack of Rigor: They assume their data have value but fail to conduct the necessary rigorous analysis to define specific life sciences use cases (e.g., regulatory submissions, non-regulatory research studies, commercial insights). Crucially, they don't determine the required quality, traceability, and completeness standards needed to satisfy client requirements for those use cases.

Serving The Health Data Ecosystem

Our team is unique because we work at the intersection of healthcare and life sciences, tackling both types of problems. We also play an intermediary between them. We are well-equipped because:

1. We are a team of specialists in RWD of all types, and Real-World Evidence (RWE) of all study types and methods.

2. We have people on the team who have worked in the cutting-edge areas of data like neurological devices, cardiac devices, ‘omics data, and more.

3. We know the value of data in the market and what must be done to meet the needs of what you want to do.

4. We operate as a collaborative, which means we can tap into all members of the team in a flexible way (unlike rigid agency-dedicated teams), and our cost structures are lower.

5. We meet clients where they stand, meaning we can evaluate data inside or outside your organization, support you through contracting, data acquisition, GTM or simply just analysis.

6. We operate with the highest levels of integrity, meaning we will encourage you to use high quality data that can be traced and validated regardless of your use case, and privacy compliance is a guarantee.

We partner with life sciences companies needing better research data and health tech/healthcare organizations looking for bright minds to commercialize their data.

Email me at Jonathan.Kurlander@sagehci.com

[1] Moore, J., & Guichot, Y. D. (2024, January 5). How to harness the power of health data to improve patient outcomes. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/01/how-to-harness-health-data-to-improve-patient-outcomes-wef24/

[2] Curious to see the broad range of service offered?  Go to Google Gemini and write “provide me a list of 100 companies involved in real world data.”

[3] The “why” on this is complicated.  I will be covering this in a future article.

[4] Is it “healthcare” or “health care”?  I think the former is for the industry, the latter is for those who provide these services to patients.