AstraZeneca has entered into a three-year collaboration agreement with IMS Health, a leading provider of healthcare information, services and technology, to further the use of real-world evidence based on observational and retrospective studies.

The pair hopes the information will provide a deeper insight into how medicines already on the market are working on real-world settings across Europe, illuminating unmet needs in the current standard of care and treatment patterns across a number of therapeutic areas, with an emphasis on chronic illnesses.

"Our collaboration with IMS is a key milestone in our commitment to understand the impact of our medicines in the real world, beyond what we see in controlled clinical trials,” said Martin Mackay, president of R&D for AstraZeneca. “This insight will help us and healthcare decision-makers to improve the treatment of disease and ensure effective use of medicines to minimize the burden on individuals and healthcare budgets."

The partnership will give AstraZeneca access to pre-existing anonymized electronic health record, which includes clinical outcome, economic and treatment pattern data. The companies also plan to jointly develop a customized research and data analysis platform.