Japan’s healthcare landscape has transformed in recent years. With an established healthcare system and non-restrictive patient access to medicines, it is now the third largest pharmaceutical market in the world and the second ranked country by protected pharmaceutical brand spend. Innovative specialty products in the country are reporting double-digit compound growth, and the availability and use of biologics continues to expand.

All of these trends make Japan an essential market for any healthcare company with global aspirations. However, regulators, payers and providers in the country are setting rigorous requirements for real world evidence (RWE) that demonstrate the safety, efficacy, and social benefits of a drug or device to win their support.

To be competitive in this environment, Pharma, Emerging BioPharma, and Medical Device companies need to be able to rapidly analyze relevant Real World Data (RWD) to prove the value of their products.

Much of that RWD can be found in existing healthcare assets, like the Medical Data Vision (MDV) database, which holds 40+ million patient records from 460+ hospitals in Japan, one of four available Japanese datasets in IQVIA’s ^® data analysis and visualization platform. When companies can access these data sets and compare them with other relevant data, they are able to rapidly identify emerging healthcare trends, inform drug development decisions, and clearly define the treatment journey to prove the value of their products over competitors.

However, this RWD only adds value if companies have the expertise and technology to rapidly analyze the data and generate results quickly enough to inform critical business decisions.

Rapid Real World Data analytics solves the need for speed

Until recently, such rapid results were nearly impossible to achieve. Even if decision-makers had access to a large healthcare database or multiple databases, running any analysis was complicated and time consuming. It could take months to generate relevant results, and the data was often presented in complex spreadsheets that were difficult to understand.

IQVIA’s self-service data analytics and visualization platform E360^® has changed this paradigm with the ability to analyze huge volumes of data from multiple databases simultaneously to provide answers in minutes. The platform has the ability to use a Common Data Model (OMOP), which allows for the systematic analysis of disparate observational data sets, making it easy to run searches and compare results across data sets, even if they use different formats or naming conventions.

Because the platform delivers results in minutes, users can ask multiple questions, and variations on the same question which gives them detailed insights to inform decisions.

How it works

The platform has an intuitive interface. Users select the data source they wish to analyze then move it to the Cohort Builder, which makes it easy to manage, build, and apply code lists, and test clinical results across varying demographic and geographic filters. Users can build and iterate cohorts defining populations ready for feasibility analysis using prebuilt methods that require no additional programming.

Once a cohort is created, the system runs queries, and within minutes users can review patient demography, ranking of drugs, comorbidity, market share, patient journey data or other key data points. All this detailed information is available through simple operations, delivering near instant results. Users can then tweak their queries or ask new questions to hone and compare results to find the specific answers they need.

Global healthcare insights - faster

The E360^® platform currently includes 20 real-world databases from 10 countries (including four from Japan) featuring claims data, electronic medical records, and pharmacy data. Together these data sets can deliver detailed insights about national healthcare landscapes and provide comparisons across nations.

In a recent webinar, entitled Achieve Your Research Goals with Japanese RWD, IQVIA’s Shujiro Takeno and Alan Thomas, spoke with Philippe Auvaro, executive director of MDV Co. about how IQVIA’s E360^® rapid analytics platform can be used to rapidly analyze Japanese healthcare data to find patients and track prescription trends.

RWD analysis demonstrated in on-demand webinar

During the Japanese data analysis webinar, Takeno demoed the platform to conduct a feasibility search of the MDV database and other Real World Data assets. He showed how to quickly identify patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, track which treatments they used and for what duration, and determine how these trends varied across different demographics.

It was a powerful demonstration of the speed, agility, and ease of use of E360^® and proved that this tool can be used cost-effectively to answer questions and inform strategy in Japan and the rest of the world.

IQVIA’s E360^® rapid analytics platform provides three key benefits to pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare stakeholders.

Insights drive results

The use of RWD analysis to inform clinical and commercial decision-making is already well-established in Europe and North America and is growing in Japan and across Asia.

The pharmaceutical and research community wants to leverage these patient databases to advance scientific discoveries and offer new treatment opportunities to patients with unmet needs. E360^® makes this possible, helping researchers streamline their analytics process, making it easy to find valuable insights that will inform future decision-making, accelerate market access, and ensure companies can find the patients and healthcare providers who are most likely to benefit from their products.

You can view the entire webinar here or contact us using the button to the right to learn more about IQVIA’s E360^® platform.