From Data Access to Evidence Usability: Connecting Payer Policy, Real-World Data, and Clinical Context to Close the Evidence Gap
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Why is data access no longer the main differentiator for pharma?
Welcome back to another episode of Theoretically Speaking. Every day, life sciences teams look at massive datasets to track how their therapies perform in the real world. But too often, those spreadsheets only tell a fraction of the story. We can see that a patient stopped taking a medication or when they switched to treatments, but we're left guessing as to the human realities behind those numbers. In this episode, we sit down with Becky Hollenberg, Senior RWD Strategy Lead at Nurstella, for a deep dive into an incredibly valuable topic. Becky walks us through how breaking down the traditional walls between claims, EMRs, and payer data completely changes how we view the patient journey. Becky, thank you so much for your time today.
I'm really excited to get into this discussion. Yeah, it was so great just to meet you today. Perfect. So the pharmaceutical industry certainly isn't hurting for data right now, but having data and having the whole story are two different things. So I really wanted to start the discussion there. For pharma companies, there's more data available today than ever before. However, most real world evidence captures only part of the patient journey. So where do these gaps exist and how can they be filled?
How does fragmented real‑world evidence limit understanding of the patient journey?
Yeah, so most real-world evidence is generated from fragmented data sources that, like you said, are only capturing parts of the patient journey. So this can often answer who's receiving treatments, when did treatments occur, how much did treatments cost, but they struggle to answer kind of the why behind those questions. So why was therapy initiated, why did patients discontinue, what clinical characteristics drove outcomes, how did payer restrictions impact access, and which patients never received therapy despite clinical need. So the root issue isn't the volume of the data, it's that it's fragmented. So sources capture isolated pieces of the journey that aren't connected. So our approach at Neurostella is integrating those data sources to kind of create a complete picture of the why behind the patient journey.
So that's linking the claims, the EMR, clinical notes, labs, and payer coverage and access data on the payer level, and then rolling it up to whatever level the client needs.
Got it. That totally makes sense. And it's clear that this integration is key to understanding the why behind the patient journey. And it isn't just an internal goal for pharma. There's also a lot of external pressures to deliver these deeper insights that are continuously mounting. So looking at that broader landscape, how are evidence expectations among payers, HTA bodies, and internal stakeholders of
What benefits come from linking claims, EMR, labs, notes, and payer data?
Yeah, so I think the why is becoming more central for external stakeholders and internal teams. They increasingly want evidence of real-world effectiveness, appropriate patient identification, outcome drivers, and impact of access restrictions. There is a real risk there because incomplete evidence can lead to mischaracterized patient populations, biased outcomes, missing access barriers, and value stories that are only telling half the pictures, in some cases, telling the wrong story that's not really capturing what's truly happening to the patient when you connect everything together. So in short, data access is no longer the differentiator. The usability of the evidence and the applicability and generalizability of that evidence will be.
And if usability and understanding the why is the new baseline expectation, we have to look a lot closer at the raw materials we're working with. So we know things like claims and EMRs are powerful, but limited when they're on their own. So wanting to break that down a bit, each data set, like I mentioned, claims, EMR data, labs, clinical notes and policies and access data. They all have individual strength, but it doesn't tell the full patient story like you've mentioned previously. So how does connecting real world data sources to build an integrated 360 degree view of the patient journey work?
Yeah, so it's each source is kind of answering a different question about the patient journey.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why is data access no longer the main differentiator for pharma?
0:09–1:24
2
How does fragmented real‑world evidence limit understanding of the patient journey?
1:24–2:50
3
What benefits come from linking claims, EMR, labs, notes, and payer data?
2:50–4:50
4
How does a 360‑degree view of patients improve cohort definition and outcome analysis?
4:50–6:36
5
In what ways do market access, HUR, and medical affairs use integrated RWD?
6:36–8:48
6
Can you walk through a real‑world use case of treatment discontinuation?
8:48–10:11
7
What is the overall impact of unified evidence on therapy value and access?
10:11–11:31