Beyond Data Silos:
Centralizing Real-World Data with IHD Cloud
Accessing and leveraging real-world data (RWD) is a persistent challenge for life sciences companies. Data silos, inefficiencies, and complex workflows often hinder organizations from fully utilizing their data assets to drive insights and decision-making. Enter IHD Cloud, a cutting-edge solution designed to centralize and streamline data access, enabling seamless collaboration and enhanced efficiency.
We spoke with Matthew Marshall, Solutions Architect at Panalgo, about the biggest hurdles life sciences companies face in managing RWD and how IHD Cloud can help. From consolidating disparate data sources to eliminating redundancies and reducing costs, IHD Cloud is redefining how teams harness data for market access, research, and evidence generation.
Q: What are common real-world data access issues that life sciences companies have, and how does IHD Cloud solve them through centralizing/consolidating data?
A: Among larger life sciences companies, particularly in biopharma, organizations run into an issue with disparate data siloes where one analytics team, say, commercially focused, has access to or has licensed real-world data for the purposes of fulfilling market access use cases, while the epidemiology/safety, HEOR or real-world evidence (RWE) teams have their own distinct data sources. It can be that the access is unknown, as in, employees are unaware of the data’s existence, or the data is presumed to be unusable for each team’s use cases (research versus provider targeting). However, when these teams bring their data into a virtual private cloud and sit IHD on top of it, they democratize access with the same set of tools and capabilities of IHD classic, where more data assets can be accessed across to support various use cases.
Q: IHD Cloud is data agnostic and integrates a wide array of real-world data sources, including claims, electronic health records, and lab results, into a single platform. Why is this centralized approach such an advantage?
A: Working with disparate RWD assets is time consuming and complex. With IHD Cloud in place, teams can build out flexible analytic workflows across the variety of use cases with shared definitions (for example, standardizing lab results for a particular indication (sharable), or clinical definitions that reside at the intersection of claims and EHR data which can reside within IHD and be shared across the organization). With IHD Cloud, multiple teams or stakeholders who have access to the data via the cloud can operate under a unified definition and be more efficient.
Q: IHD Cloud also centralizes data management and analytics within clients’ own cloud environments. How does this flexibility give life sciences companies an edge?
A: Centralization yields inherent scalability, which is key. Centralization removes redundant efforts, streamlining decision making and minimizing errors, ensuring that different internal stakeholders are operating from repeatable and reliable output and insights. Collaboration further saves time, eliminates transaction costs, and optimizes the use of data licenses to accomplish evidence generation goals, and it puts meaningful insights in front of regulators and payor decision makers sooner which can lead to increases in market penetration and patient impact.
Q: How does IHD Cloud’s centralized command hub foster better collaboration among teams?
A: Take the alternative – how does working across different analytic processes and systems break down? Without IHD Cloud, there’s less likely to be shared definitions for patient cohorts or analytic methodology, error prone code, and siloed information. With IHD Cloud, users can readily work from the same set of intuitive tools and efficiently share their work, and stakeholders can have direct access to the same environment for more immediate feedback and iteration. When you’re operating from same set of tools and you can comment directly within our dashboarding interface, it makes it easier. All of that work is residing in the same place, and it makes the entire team more efficient than the alternative, which is emailing output, hoping for feedback, or sending output, questions, or responses via organizational chat tools like Teams or Slack. All of that should occur in one place, and IHD Cloud is the key.
Q: IHD Cloud lets companies customize, scale, and prioritize resources seamlessly—without extra hosting fees. Why is this such a game changer?
A: Lower costs are obviously ideal as teams work with increasingly scrutinized budgets. IHD classic and IHD Cloud effectively provide scalability for teams. IHD classic optimizes productivity for teams often without the base analytic maturity or experience to handle the intended volume of analytic throughput.
IHD Cloud puts control of the platform directly within the client’s environment, broadening access but also allowing the client to manage their own user base, compute, and data mart – there’s no duplication of datasets between clients and Panalgo, no TPAs, no need for managed input on named users or data loading. Leaving out the legal component with this single instance storage, all the data sits in their virtual private cloud and doesn’t need to be duplicated, so it saves them time, it saves them money, and it gives them more power and control over how to use the tool in their own private cloud.
Q: How does the analytics services component of IHD Cloud differ from alternatives in the marketplace?
Just as with IHD classic, we have experienced analysts that can take on the analytic workload of our clients, effectively scaling their resources. We take a tiered approach to this support to meet clients’ needs and budget, providing resources in various part-time and full-time arrangements. These analysts become an embedded member of the client team and bring industry experience, platform expertise, and are backed by an internal team to ensure flawless execution of studies and ad-hoc requests.
Find out how IHD Cloud can help you turn real-world data into real-world impact. Contact us.