Big Data is going to change the practice of healthcare worldwide, for both professionals and individual consumers alike. It will help patients be more active participants in their treatment, give physicians more information about individuals and populations on the whole, and will help pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs more effectively, safely, and efficiently. It’s really easy to type those words on a screen, but it’s a whole lot more complicated to put these ideas into practice.
That’s why it’s news that two leaders in digital healthcare have announced that they will work together to make patient-generated data more available for clinical research. Medidata provides cloud-based solutions for clinical researchers, including analytics, serving 90% of the top 25 pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Validic has created a digital health platform that provides access to data created by wearable and mobile health devices, reaching 160 million people in 47 different countries. Their ecosystem supports more than 175 different devices and apps, including products from leading consumer companies such as Garmin, Fitbit, Withings, and Jawbone.
One of the critical details about this system is that it is built from the ground up with security and regulatory compliance in mind. Validic’s system has FDA approval and complies with HIPAA security requirements. This means that the data from patients can be made available securely for use in clinical trials by drug companies, as well as for other healthcare research. The result will be increased patient engagement, increased data that can lead to improved treatments and outcomes.
