Datavant partners with the People-Centered Research Foundation to de-identify and link data across national clinical research network

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Datavant announced today its selection by the People-Centered Research Foundation (PCRF) to de-identify and link patient data across PCORnet, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network. PCRF is the central office for PCORnet, which has been developed with funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and consists of more than 70 top academic medical centers, community hospitals, clinics, and health plans; as well as a central coordinating center. The Datavant partnership supports the goal of PCORnet’s network partners to enhance PCORnet’s ability to accelerate people-driven research throughout the United States – without compromising patient privacy or source control.

Real-world data, which shows how patients’ health changes over time in correlation with the treatments and interventions patients receive, is critical for improving patient outcomes. Real-world data can be used to answer questions ranging from “what is the long-term mortality rate of patients given a particular treatment” to “where are there enough patients to undertake a clinical trial.” As required by the 21st Century Cures Act, the FDA recently published guidelines to use real-world data as a complement to clinical trials in order to better understand the effectiveness and the safety of drugs.

Real-world data must be shared across institutions to have sufficient sources and scale to answer critical medical questions – and a key challenge is maintaining patient privacy and ensuring that data is adequately de-identified. PCRF’s selection of Datavant’s privacy-preserving technology allows the creation of a large, de-identified data network.

By de-identifying and linking their data with Datavant, the institutions participating in PCORnet will have the option to become a part of Datavant’s data ecosystem, which consists of hundreds of de-identified datasets. The Datavant ecosystem is specifically designed to facilitate bilateral data sharing while protecting patient privacy and empowering sources to control how their data is used.

“We are honored to support the important work that the PCORnet network partners are doing,” said Travis May, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Datavant. “We share the common mission of unlocking the power of health data to answer the questions that matter most to patients and those who care for them. We are confident that PCORnet’s de-identified and linked national network will accelerate medical research and improve outcomes for patients.”

“In order to realize the full promise of PCORnet, it is necessary for us to reliably link patient data across research networks, institutions and health plans while protecting patient privacy,” said Donna Cryer, Interim Executive Director of PCRF. “We ran a robust process to select a partner for this important task and were impressed by Datavant’s team, technology and patient-first strategic vision. We look forward to collaborating as PCORnet continues to build the nation’s largest clinical research network to power people-centered research.”

Russ Waitman, Director of Medical Informatics and Enterprise Analytics at the University of Kansas Medical Center, is the Principal Investigator at the Greater Plains Collaborative Clinical Research Network, which is a member of PCORnet. “Since PCORnet’s creation, we’ve recognized the need for a consistent method to securely link de-identified patient information across participating healthcare systems, health plans, and patient organizations. We’ve been very supportive of the thoughtful requirements and selection process and are excited to see Datavant in operation so we can provide more accurate and complete representations of health across the nation.”

About Datavant
Datavant’s mission is to connect the world’s health data. Datavant works with data owners and users to ensure that data can be connected to power next-generation analytics and applications while protecting patient privacy. Datavant is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more about Datavant at www.datavant.com.