Last month Merck joined Health Data Consortium as one of our newest members. Merck is a global health care leader working to help the world be well. Through their prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, and consumer care and animal health products, they work with customers and operate in more than 140 countries to deliver innovative health solutions. They also demonstrate their commitment to increasing access to health care through far-reaching policies, programs and partnerships.
To introduce Merck to our community, we asked Jane Horvath, Executive Director at Merck, a few questions about why they joined HDC and what initiatives they are currently working on to advance the health data movement:
Why is it a priority for your organization to be a member of the HDC?
Jane Horvath: Merck believes that observational health data can be an important tool by which to improve the health care delivery system for the future.
What initiatives / programs at your organization related to health data may be interesting to other members of the consortium?
JH: An example of how we hope to use observational data to improve health is our relationship with the Regenstrief Institute to study diseases and interventions for a variety of chronic conditions. Another example would be our relationship with Maccabi Healthcare of Israel where together, we hope to identify unmet patient needs, real world outcomes resulting from treatment interventions, and optimal approaches to improve treatment adherence. In partnership with Heritage Provider Network and facilitated by HDC, we have a health data challenge to create products and services that can support people living with diabetes and/or heart disease.
What are your organization’s (or team’s) short-term (e.g. 6 months – 1 year) and long-term (e.g. 5 years) goals for health data?
JH: We hope to understand the value and potential of longitudinal observational datasets for improving health outcomes and personalizing healthcare interventions and then we hope to be able to leverage that understanding to improve individual and population health.
What do you view as the biggest opportunity in health data?
JH: Observational health data has the potential to move us forward toward a learning health care system. It has the potential to allow us to identify optimal interventions for specific groups of people with specific medical conditions.
What are the biggest challenges facing the health data movement?
JH: There are many challenges ahead of us in the use of observational data – including reliability of different datasets, governance, “fit for a purpose” issues, interoperability, and methods. The challenges have been identified and the work to solve the challenges is ongoing. It is an exciting time in this field of research.
Any upcoming events, programs and / or job opportunities you’d like folks to know about?
JH: Winners of the health data challenge will be announced in January 2014. Follow Merck on Twitter to stay connected.
If you too are interested in finding out more about becoming an HDC member and the benefits to you as an organization or individual, please visit our Membership page for more details.