Data Collection Methods

All healthcare stakeholders – payers, providers, patients and policymakers alike – require significant evidence of value in terms of comparative clinical- and cost-effectiveness prior to adopting new technologies.
The quality of the data you generate is defined by your data collection methodologies.
A well-defined data collection method can produce evidence supporting your value messages and prevent siloing of information.

While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are deemed the “gold standard” for evidence generation, you don’t always need to conduct one – there are many instances where conducting a RCT may not even be feasible – and there are many other methods of collecting the data you need.
It’s often necessary to collect data using a combination of different data collection modes (through mixed mode studies).
Meta-analyses draw upon existing data from several different studies and produce evidence at the top of the hierarchy of evidence.

With intimate knowledge about the data dilemmas faced by clients and expertise in data creation at every level of the healthcare ecosystem, our experts can gather the value-focused data needed to bring your technology to market through a variety of study designs and methods, including quantitative, qualitative, prospective and retrospective research, real-world data collection, meta-analyses, mixed mode studies and more.
We can review planned clinical protocols (or help to develop them) to ensure your patient-reported outcomes (PRO) and economic endpoints reflect the research question you’re looking to answer and ensure instruments are well-defined and reliable; work with contacts at your clinical sites to define a site-specific data collection strategy; educate site contacts on which patient forms should be collected, as well as how forms should be de-identified and delivered; and collect patient forms (e.g., UB-04, CMS-1500 (HCFA-1500), and itemized billing forms) and PRO instruments, abstract data, and create and maintain databases in preparation for data analysis.
With access to a breadth of disease registries, device and medication registries, insurance billing and claims databases (e.g., Medicare Claims, MarketScan/Truven, and more), our experts can abstract real-world data (RWD) to demonstrate the combined clinical and economic value of your technology.