Principal Investigator: Elias Mossialos
Researchers: Huseyin Naci, Beth Kreling, Max Salcher, Caroline Carney, Sahan Jayawardana
Start Date: 01 February 2017
End Date: 31 January 2019
Region: Europe
Keywords: big data; health care systems; value-based health care; outcomes research, health policy, health economics

Big Data for Better Outcomes (BD4BO) is a major research programme launched by the Innovative Medicine Initiative 2 (IMI2) to facilitate the use of “big data” to enable the transition towards value-based, outcomes-focused health care systems in Europe. The LSE Health-led “Big Data for Better Outcomes, Policy Innovation, and Healthcare Systems Transformation” (DO-IT)  consortium coordinates the BD4BO programme, identifying and addressing opportunities for data-driven health care system transformation based on input from a wide range of stakeholders. DO-IT shapes the BD4BO programme strategy and provides the programme’s disease specific projects (Alzheimer’s Disease, haematological malignancies, cardiovascular diseases, prostate cancer and future topics) with support on methodological questions and policy-relevant translation of knowledge and insights generated by the programme.

DO-IT acts as the BD4BO coordination platform (Coordination and Support Action), realising synergies across disease specific projects and maximising impact on European healthcare systems. More specifically, DO-IT aims to:

• act as a knowledge broker by aggregating learnings and disseminating findings from BD4BO projects;
• provide BD4BO projects with support on methods for selecting and measuring outcomes in real world settings;
• develop minimum data privacy standards for the collection, use, storage and transfer of clinical and biological data;
• engage with key stakeholders to understand value and limitations of data-driven approaches for value-based health care, and to ensure real world impact for the BD4BO programme;
• recommend areas for future collaborative research to address gaps in standards, methodologies, tools, and available data required for a meaningful impact of big data on European healthcare systems.

LSE Health coordinates 35 organisations in the public-private DO-IT consortium with a total budget of 7.2 million Euros. As the leading academic partner, LSE Health plays a prominent role in developing the programme strategy. LSE researchers are working to provide methodological guidance on collection and analysis of real world data to ensure quality and consistency of individual projects, in line with the BD4BO programme objective. The methodological research focus is highly policy focussed: robust methodological criteria need to be identified if routinely collected data are to be used to promote high-value health care. Questions around the selection of relevant outcomes in different disease areas, their measurement, and the analysis of observational data as foundation for decision-making need to be considered carefully to realise the potential of big data in health care. LSE Health will contribute to the development of a “roadmap” that charts the methodological steps required from identification and measurement of meaningful outcomes to their use in value-based health care systems.

Consortium Members 

London School of Economics and Political Science (Project Coordinator), Novartis (Project Lead), National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Swedish Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency, European Cancer Patient Coalition, European Multiple Sclerosis Platform, Semmelweis University, Imperial College London, Swedish Institute for Health Economics, Centre for Research in Healthcare Management at Università Bocconi, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norwegian Medicines Agency, Technology, Methods and Infrastructure for Networked Medical Research (TMF), Inserm Toulouse, The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, Amgen, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), Farmaindustria, GlaxoSmithKline, Health iQ, InterSystems, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck Group, MSD Sharp & Dohme, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Servier, UCB, Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (VfA).

For more information, see the BD4BO website.