Report of the Study Group on Utilization of Big Data in the Medical and Health Fields vol.3
Masami Morita (Senior Researcher, Pharmaceutical and Industrial Policy Research Institute)
Kazuteru Sugiura (Senior Researcher, Pharmaceuticals and Industrial Policy Research Institute)
(Published May 2018)
The study group has been conducting research and studies to examine the cross-value chain in the pharmaceutical industry and to make recommendations on key issues in the utilization of big data in the field of medical health. This year, the main theme was "utilization of medical data," which is considered to be the most important of the various issues, and we examined what kind of medical data can currently be utilized in the pharmaceutical industry value chain and how, and what issues need to be addressed in its utilization.
In the utilization of medical data in the pharmaceutical industry, the content, quantity, and quality of medical data differ greatly between medical data for the purpose of drug discovery and those needed in information provision activities and distribution management. Upstream of the value chain, such as drug discovery research, requires detailed, narrow and deep data even though the sample size is not so large, while downstream of the value chain, such as information provision and distribution management, requires broad and shallow data with less detailed information but more comprehensive data.
Various databases are already being developed, mainly by the national government, public administration, and academia, but the level of content, quality, and quantity of each database differs. In order to promote data utilization, many databases should be further developed from the viewpoints of content, quality, and quantity, as well as from a broad perspective of the purpose of utilization.
In this report, we summarize the above-mentioned contents, and from the standpoint of the pharmaceutical industry, we have compiled five recommendations for the industry and beyond as high-priority items for promoting the "utilization of medical data".