Health Economics: Database Studies

Real world data—from administrative claims data, electronic medical records (EMRs), disease registries, and other health data sources—can help you better understand your market and how to position your product for success. Using database studies, we can help you can gain insights on:

  • Burden (cost) of illness
  • Cost of treatment
  • Health care resource utilization
  • Treatment patterns
  • Medication adherence, persistence, and compliance
  • Comparative effectiveness and costs of alternative treatments
  • Disease prevalence and public health impact
  • Safety studies

Because we are “database agnostic” and have experience working with over 40 different data sources, we’re able to advise you on the best resource—or whether a database study is appropriate at all—to use to answer your particular health economics research questions.

Research Methods

Our advantage lies in our research team and the scientific rigor they bring to your projects so you can confidently make good decisions based on your study’s results.

Our process includes determining the appropriate analytical methods—including case-control, cohort analyses and pre-post analyses—preparing study protocols, accessing and extracting data, and developing statistical analysis plans and outcomes measures. As needed, we employ advanced statistical techniques such as propensity scoring to control for selection bias, Kaplan-Meier techniques to summarize time-based outcomes, Poisson and Cox proportional hazard models for multivariable analyses, and generalized linear models to assess cost-related outcomes.

Selecting the Best Data Sources

We have collaborated with a wide range of data partners, including:

  • Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
  • CPRD
  • Drug Abuse Warning Network
  • Friuli-Venezia-Giulia databases
  • GE Healthcare (EMR)
  • Health and Retirement Survey
  • Health Search Database
  • Health Survey of England (HSE)
  • Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) databases
  • Henry Ford Health System
  • Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)
  • i3 Innovus Integrated Health Care Information Systems (IHCIS)
  • i3 Innovus Lab Rx
  • Institute for Applied Health Research Berlin (InGef)
  • IMS MediPlus
  • Japan Medical Data Center (JMDC)
  • MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters (CCAE)
  • MarketScan Health and Productivity Management (HPM)
  • Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)
  • Medicare and Medicaid claims data
  • MedMining (Linked claims and EMR from Geisinger)
  • National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS)
  • National Comorbidity Survey (NCS)
  • National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
  • National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)
  • National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS)
  • National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS)
  • National Household Survey (NHS)
  • National Inpatient Surveys (NIS)
  • National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES)
  • National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES)
  • National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS)
  • National Survey On Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)
  • Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network
  • PharMetrics/LifeLink
  • PHARMO
  • Premier Perspective Rx database
  • Saskatchewan Health
  • Scandinavian cancer registries
  • SEER-Medicare Linked Database
  • Studies of Left Ventricular Dysfunction (SOLVD)
  • Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) cancer registries
  • The Health Improvement Network (THIN)
  • US Renal Data System
  • Veterans Affairs claims data