What Factors Should Specialty Drug Manufacturers Consider When Choosing a Data Aggregator?

Giannouris: Data quality is always talked about—a data aggregator should be able to ensure that the data they are managing for you is being managed in a high-quality fashion. At ValueCentric, we have a set of processes that we use to ensure data quality up front when a specialty pharmacy is being on boarded on behalf of a manufacturer. Data quality is always important.

The ability to track a patient longitudinally through a common DID engine is another one. The ability to bring in not just specialty pharmacy data but other datasets, like a hub, co-pay provider, apps, nurse educator. The ability to bring in specialty distributor data, wholesaler data, 3PL data.

And then, not only the ability to manage and bring all that data together and provide a manufacturer or customer an extract, but the ability to then analyze that data through an analytics platform in a suite of standardized reports that are specific to the specialty channel. The ability to also quickly create custom reporting and analytics.

I think those are probably the keys ones: data quality, the ability to do de-identification of data to link a patient longitudinally, the ability to bring in a diverse set of data, and the ability to do reporting and analytics on that data.