Healthcare systems in Europe are facing a number of challenges that need to address how to:

• Demonstrate more evidence-based value in an increasingly price-constrained environment.
• Improve a health data collection landscape marked by a group of systems that is often duplicative, uncoordinated and inefficient.
• Engage patients to become more active data owners and contributors – whilst ensuring privacy.

Enter ‘Big Data’, which has the potential to contribute significantly to meeting all these challenges and which also gave rise to the Big Data For Better Outcomes Programme (BD4BO).  Its mission is to improve health outcomes and healthcare systems in Europe by maximising the potential of Big Data.

ROADMAP is a partner in this ambitious project, which is part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) 2 – the world’s largest public-private partnership in the life sciences.  The scope of BD4BO currently consists of four disease-specific projects that are focusing on Alzheimer’s disease; Haematologic malignancies; Cardiovascular diseases; and Prostate cancer. There are also two co-coordinating projects – one that serves all BD4BO projects, and the European Health Data Network (EHDN) – an infrastructure project whose objective is to establish a federated network of relevant and high-quality data sources across Europe.

Big Data has the potential to be truly transformational. There is a collective understanding amongst all the key stakeholders that we need to collaborate better to harness the power of Real-World Data. The benefits to society span a broad spectrum of sectors including healthcare systems, disease treatment, trial/product design and use, and most importantly, patient use of our medicines.

For more information, go to the BD4BO website.

Harnessing the power of Big Data has the potential to transform healthcare systems and patient outcomes