CRO

PPD partners up for real-world outcomes research

As regulators and payers place increasing importance on real-world data, CRO PPD is working to expand its reach in the field, joining forces with a division of insurance giant Anthem.

Under a partnership, PPD and Anthem's ($WLP) HealthCore division will market their services side by side to life sciences companies looking to gather data from outside of standard clinical trials, looking at patients getting routine treatment. The partners plan to cover pre- and postapproval projects, poring over medical claims data and electronic health records to better make the case for sponsors' products.

In the past, such research was largely limited to drugs and devices already on the market, but the growing importance of establishing real-world value early in the development process has shifted things forward, PPD said. More and more biopharma companies are designing trials with an eye on long-term outcomes, and the CRO believes its deal with HealthCore will help its clients stay ahead of the curve.

"The goals of optimizing reimbursement and increasing payer and patient value are becoming more dependent on biopharmaceutical companies' ability to provide high-quality evidence of how products will perform for patients in a real-world setting," PPD Vice President Michael Pollock said in a statement. "With the collaborative expertise of PPD and HealthCore … we hope to set a new standard for the quality, cost and speed of real-world evidence generation that can help optimize patient outcomes and enable our clients to better demonstrate the true value of their products and the return on their investments in new product development."

The partnership is the latest in a string of moves through which PPD is working to expand its presence on the global market for R&D. Late last year, the CRO partnered with the data collection experts at ERT, and, in September, PPD bought out the discovery-focused outfit X-Chem in an acquisition designed to bolster its early-stage capacity. In 2013, the CRO acquired technology provider Acurian to better focus on clinical trial enrollment and retention services.

- read the announcement (PDF)