Global CRO Quintiles and IMS Health, a global information and technology services company, have announced a global strategic alliance that will advance the way biopharmaceutical companies generate real-world evidence (RWE) and apply critical insights to drive late-stage clinical research. Offering complementary strengths in real-world data management, operational delivery, advanced analytics and scientific and therapeutic expertise, the collaboration is designed to accelerate assessments of treatment impact and help improve patient outcomes.

As healthcare stakeholders increase their focus on value, evidence of a medicine’s effectiveness and safety in real-world settings continues to be a critical component of drug development and healthcare delivery. The new alliance brings together market-leading capabilities in prospective and retrospective research, operational study delivery, proprietary RWE technologies and epidemiological expertise to provide customers with a complete view of a product’s impact and the patient experience in clinical practice.

“As demand increases for real-world evidence, biopharmaceutical companies need to integrate data from multiple sources to accelerate critical insights for stakeholders,” said Scott Evangelista, president of integrated healthcare services at Quintiles. “This collaboration greatly enhances access to healthcare data from across the world—providing customers with the critical information and the related services needed to demonstrate the value of their medicines to physicians, payers and patients.”

The alliance will combine IMS Health’s strength in technology-enabled RWE information management, deep understanding of global health systems and advanced clinical and commercial analytics with Quintiles’ global breadth of operational expertise, experience in prospective studies and scientific knowledge to support all aspects of real-world and late-phase research.

Healthcare stakeholders will benefit from IMS Health’s access to 500 million anonymous patient records, as well as its scalable Evidence 360 RWE platform. Quintiles is providing experience in real-world and late-phase programs involving more than 74,000 sites and more than 650,000 enrolled patients in more than 100 countries since 2011 along with its award-winning Quintiles Infosario platform. Applying those combined strengths will enable biopharmaceutical companies to optimize physician and patient recruitment, streamline data collection and study execution, as well as improve the quality and impact of real-world evidence worldwide.