When we go to the doctor. Then the doctors administer the problem and try to reach the possible best treatment possible for a certain problem. Sometimes you will feel that the doctor is spending more time to know and collect the data about you rather than giving you some prescriptions.

Electronic medical records are available everywhere which is often hectic for doctors but intrusive for the patients. Researchers are continuously studying about the vast data which has been gathered in the records with their insurance and billing records. It could prove itself to be very useful and digging out about the medical history of patients. Take an example as if FDA is approving one medicine which is new then new doctors will not know the optimal level of consumption to every patient which differs in age, sex or severity of the disease.

Dr. Janet Woodrock who is heading the FDA’s drug approval branch. Especially when it comes to drugs fast-tracked through the process, “there are so many questions that remain when a drug is approved,” “Many of the questions are not interesting to academics so they’re not done in the academic setting, and companies are not compelled to do them… so nobody does them. I’ve been raving about this for years!” She told these lines at the Friends of Cancer Research meeting which is a nonprofit organization.

The information is present but somewhere buried and is placed in the medical records and billing records. The main question which stands out is that if the usage of this information for the medical purpose will be ethical or right as basically the information was not collected for the research purpose. The researchers which were engaged in working on cancer treatment discovered that the data is lacking many things and can prove to be not useful.

“Physicians are spending a tremendous amount of time entering information into electronic systems to the point they can hardly find time in their day to look patients in the eye,” says Dr. Andrew Norden, a chief medical officer of Cota, a company that crunches digital medical data gleaned from these records. “Yet to date, we’ve not been able to drive knowledge forward much from that information.”

Cota who is the medical officer has joined the other organizations which are involved in keeping the records to improve the treatment of cancer. The databases are concluded to enhance the value of lung cancer.

The results of this pilot study, unveiled at the Friends of Cancer Research meeting, showed that the six independent dives into the data came up with roughly consistent answers. That tells that this information collected about patients, dubbed real-world data, is potentially useful for research.

Nancy Dryer said “We do have a national death index,” at the medical data firm called IQVIA. “It’s phenomenal, but it’s slow.” It can take more than a year for a death to be recorded there, which means people trying to study medical records have to deal with a difficult time lag. There are other faster ways to glean this information – for example from credit bureaus. “They actually know if you’re dead!” Dryer says. But medical researchers can’t readily access that information because of privacy concerns.

Another challenge which comes in the scene that dead people data is not listed in the already written data as it takes time. Researchers who are running the formal clinical trials of the new drug discovered. Sometimes it becomes so hard to tell the exact disease or exact diagnosis of the patient from the electronic medical report.

Apparently, that’s a very big barrier, to get the diagnosis correct in the patient’s own chart!” Woodcock says. “So you can see how far we have to go.” Woodcock further tells that this is worth exploring, as the medical field depends on the formal trial held in clinics. It is testing the new treatment which came and new modifications done in the existing treatment.

The traditional system provides the most reliable data, but “it’s incredibly, ridiculously and unsustainably expensive,” Woodcock says. She laments that clinical trials operate largely in isolation from routine clinical care, “and we must bring them back together if we’re going to investigate interventions rapidly and thoroughly.” Figuring out how to use real-world evidence “is the key to making that happen,” she says.

The data which is collected is not going to be consistent as the data is ever changing and can contain errors. The doctors need to find out the solution for obtaining the noise-free data and judge whether this information is worthy enough to use it in research.

Various drug companies are desperate to use this information in order to find new treatment and this will help to target and decide the value of drugs.

Diana Zuckerman who is the president of group of advocacy called as National Center for Health Research, which is concerned about the use of world data. “You can pretty much make the data show whatever you want it to show,” she says in a telephone interview. So if you put the data into the hands of drug companies, who have a financial incentive to find new uses for their drugs and improve their market share, “you can’t expect they’re going to be conducting unbiased research if nobody’s monitoring that.”

FDA is allowed to see all the data which companies submit for their use of drug applications. FDA is wrestling the questions about the billing records.

https://factsherald.com/researchers-are-looking-forward-to-find-the-med…