Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming research and working life across various industries. But what is its significance in health data analysis and real-world evidence (RWE) research? Medaffcon’s experts, Juhani Aakko and Lisse-Lotte Hermansson, share their perspectives on AI in their work.
Patient-centricity, Real-World Evidence (RWE) in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and the significance of artificial intelligence were some of the topics at ISPOR Europe in Barcelona this November.
Sweden and Finland are leaders in developing and applying health technology and provide ideal environments for conducting Health Technology Assessments (HTA) for medical devices.
Medaffcon's operations in Sweden are well-established and growing, offering pharmaceutical companies RWE studies and Market Access services delivered by Data Scientists, Market Access experts, and RWE specialists working together.
The prognosis for patients with multiple myeloma (MM) has improved as treatments have advanced, but the disease remains incurable. The prevalence of the disease is increasing in Finland as the population gets older. This is evident from a recently published nationwide retrospective study based on real-world evidence (RWE).
The adoption of new diabetes medications in Finland was active between 2012 and 2019, according to an RWE (Real World Evidence) study published in May 2024. The study was conducted by Medaffcon in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Sanofi.
In the coming years, breakthroughs in neurological and psychiatric drug research are expected to change treatment practices and significantly improve patients’ quality of life.
Medaffcon experts are versatile professionals who adapt to customer needs. In this article, one of them, Liisa Ukkola-Vuoti, a senior scientific advisor at Medaffcon, describes her work over two weeks. Liisa is also one of the writers for the Health Data Site by Medaffcon.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in Finland, with a particularly poor prognosis for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It is often diagnosed at an advanced stage when treatment options are limited. A recently published retrospective registry-based real-world evidence (RWE) study on KRAS-mutated NSCLC patients in Finland addressed this issue.
Patient Dynamics caters to the needs of pharmaceutical companies by providing precise information for sales and marketing decision-making.
Finland will become an even more attractive place for conducting RWE (real-world evidence) research when it becomes a seamless part of the European Health Data Space (EHDS). Thus, health data can be used more efficiently across the European Union (EU), and datasets can be combined on an EU-wide basis.
A key challenge in using real-world healthcare data (RWD) is how to standardize data across different healthcare providers and countries.
Hospital data lakes offer clinicians diverse real-world data (RWD) that supports their work. Dr. Heikki Ekroos, Chief Physician of Pulmonary Diseases at Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) Porvoo Hospital, presented real-world evidence (RWE) studies that were based on HUS data lakes data at Medaffcon’s EMMA client event.
Real-world data (RWD) created in Finnish healthcare is comprehensive and high-quality. Sweden, another Scandinavian country, also offers high-quality healthcare data for real-world evidence generation.
“Renewable drug therapy challenges the current complex drug evaluation system,” states Lauri Pelkonen, a leading expert at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (STM). For this reason, the evaluation activity is being reformed to better respond to changes in the operating environment.
The EU introduces changes to the assessment of medicines: EU HTA application in evaluations will gradually start next year
Finland boasts numerous strengths that make it an outstanding choice for real-world data-based (RWD) research.
Heikki Koski, currently the Service Business and Development Director at Tamro, has been appointed as the CEO of Medaffcon Oy, effective from April 1, 2024. Medaffcon is a subsidiary of Tamro Oyj. The current CEO of Medaffcon, Jarmo Hahl, will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the company's future in his new position leading the consulting business.
Selecting the right interactions is a key factor for success. Therefore, the client should also consider how well the partner understands the pharmaceutical industry's needs. When the partner has extensive hands-on experience from the industry, these irreplaceable insights enable the partner to guide the project at different strategic levels, ensuring that the client’s various needs can be identified and met.
In healthcare, there is a vast amount of data being generated and processed. Sometimes, its utilization is cumbersome because the data is scattered, and its analysis requires a lot of preprocessing.
My list of publications includes over 20 peer-reviewed scientific articles. One of them is a special one because the Finnish Current Care Guidelines mention it for heart failure. This blog discusses the impact of research by Medaffcon on treatment practices.
A study published in January 2024 in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology has revealed that the treatment of adults with Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS-IF) clearly has significant room for improvement.
Sweden's publicly funded healthcare system and universal access to specialized health care make the data derived from Sweden broadly generalizable, covering diverse populations including different ethnic backgrounds.
The study describes how Multiple Myeloma treatments have changed in 2013–2019, and what the estimated treatment costs are.
Utilising the data lake of the Hospital District of Southwest Finland (TYKS), Medaffcon, Pfizer and TYKS have examined the clinical adoption of new medications for advanced renal cell carcinoma and the utility of data extracted without extensive manual extraction.
Hospital data lakes are a central source of information in Medaffcon's studies, and often, data retrieval can be automated. However, what happens when more complex matters need to be extracted from the databases? In such cases, manual extraction is used, says Medaffcon's Scientific Advisor, Riikka Mattila
Swedish real-world health data, a recent addition to the in-house capabilities of Medaffcon, offer unique possibilities for measuring disease burdens and determinants, the effects of different exposures, and the outcomes of various health conditions in a population of almost 10.5 million people.
This Christmas, Medaffcon is participating in Mieli Ry's charity initiative aimed at improving the well-being of children and young people
The ISPOR Europe conference in 2023, held in Copenhagen, gathered a record number of participants. The Bella Center hosted HEOR professionals eager to learn about the latest trends in their field. The use of real world evidence (RWE) in health technology assessment (HTA) and regulatory evidence generation played a crucial role in the conference program, alongside valuable interpersonal interactions which were also in an important part of the event.
Real-world data (RWD) can, however, be utilised also in a variety of non-clinical medical and pharmaceutical studies to compare aspects such as treatment outcomes and resource utilisation between different geographies and treatment options, reminds Samuli Tuominen, senior data scientist at Medaffcon.
Coming up soon, Copenhagen will be the center of health economics as more than five thousand pharmaceutical and healthcare professionals gather for the ISPOR conference. ISPOR has been well known, especially among health economists. However, this years’ top trends real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) attract even wider audience.
AstraZeneca Finland, Medaffcon and clinical experts have investigated what is the rarer endotype of severe asthma using biomarker data obtained from the data lake of Turku University Hospital (TYKS), Auria.
The study utilised propensity-score matching to compare the performance of two immunosuppressive drugs in patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis after liver transplantation.
Dr. Essi Havula has done an impressive international career as a researcher and top scientist. She joins Medaffcon team to strengthen the scientific possibilities of utilizing real-world-data and evidence.
Medaffcon in September added two new members to its team of data scientists, preparing itself for an era where pharmaceutical development and innovation are driven increasingly by real-world data. “Real-world evidence is getting bigger and bigger and we’re getting more and more research assignments, so we need smart minds and quick fingers to do all the data science,” sums up Iiro Toppila, data analysis lead at Medaffcon.
Experts at Medaffcon have perused volumes of real-world data on patients with atopic dermatitis to provide new insights into co-morbidities and treatment patterns associated with the chronic skin condition.
Experts from Medaffcon, Takeda and the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS) have concluded an extensive study into paediatric short-bowel syndrome based on information from patient records.
Our first national multiregister study on sexually transmitted diseases provides important information on the burden of genital warts (GWs) in Finland.
Sweden’s abundance of high-quality digital healthcare data has enabled what is surely one of the most exhaustive study of mortality associated with Clostridioides difficile infections (CDI) in the world.
Studies mapping short-term absences provide new information on the burden caused by diseases for healthcare services and the society.
Research based on Finnish and Swedish real-world health data can be generalised also to other settings and populations, says Dr. Johanna Simin, real-world epidemiologist at Medaffcon.
Joining Medaffcon enables Dr. Johanna Simin to leverage her expertise to advance real-world data use and evidence-driven health. Medaffcon, in turn, can augment its in-house capabilities with the high-quality digital healthcare data found in Sweden.
Medaffcon has added Swedish healthcare registries to its capabilities as it continues to pursue growth and facilitate data utilisation by providing pharmaceutical companies access to rich and relevant healthcare data.
Timo Karvinen joined Medaffcon’s Market Access team as an expert in the beginning of May. In addition to his extensive expertise, he also brings a whole new service concept to Medaffcon.
Register study undisputedly confirms that a smoker’s risk for any postoperative complications is significantly higher than non-smokers’.