Life Sciences Forecasting & Analytics Reference Sources

These are many of the sources we use or have recommended to clients for forecast assumptions or other types of analytics. If you have recommendations for additional sources or other comments, please do not hesitate to contact us!

If you would prefer a PDF version, please download it here.

Subject Reference SourcesNotes

Multi-Client Therapeutic Area Reports

  • Multi-client (syndicated) reports typically provide information on a specific therapeutic area and can provide considerable information at a moderate cost
  • Such reports often cover epidemiology, current treatment practices, current and pipeline products to treat the disease, and may provide forecasts
  • Regions covered typically include the United States, the five major European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom), and may include Japan
  • These reports are also valuable for determining factors such as diagnosis or treatment rates that may be difficult to estimate without primary research

Real-World Data (Claims/EHR/EMR)

  • Real-World Data (RWD) is derived from samples of health insurance claims data and/or electronic health/medical records (EHR/EMR)
  • Many of these companies access the same claims data, but may have more extensive or proprietary agreements with individual payers
  • RWD may be cross-sectional or longitudinal (treatment of individual patients may be followed across several years)
  • RWD providers may have differing abilities to clean and present the data, especially EHR/EMR

Pharmaceutical Audit Data

  • Nationally-projected prescription data are comprehensive, but may not include products distributed through specialty pharmacies and provider-administered drugs
  • Prescriptions are US-only; other regions are unit-based

Provider Affiliations

  • These services map relationships between health care providers, facilities where they work, and insurance and provider/hospital networks in which they participate

Commercial Survey Data

  • These products are surveys of office-based physicians and collect patient-visit information: patient characteristics (including diagnoses) and treatments provided
  • These are conducted on an ongoing basis
  • Data are nationally projected

Government Outpatient Care Survey Data

  • Government survey data provide an easily accessible, cost-effective way of determining diagnosis and treatment volume
  • These data are based on a sample of patient visits, so they are not well-suited for rare conditions
  • MCBS and MEPS are useful for estimating household and personal insurance coverage and medical expenditures, including out-of-pocket costs

Inpatient & Ambulatory Procedures

  • Similar to the outpatient care data above, but focused on inpatient or ambulatory surgery settings

Oncology Data & Information

  • In addition to CancerMPact and Ipsos Oncology Monitor, real-world data suppliers (see above) can calculate oncology patients by treatment and lines of treatment
  • Note that patient sub-segments (such as mutation status or presence of other biomarkers) may be difficult to determine without EHR/EMR integration

Population Data

  • Most statistics authorities separate population data into estimates (historical) and projections (future)

Rare/Genetic Diseases

  • Orphanet
  • National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD)
  • NIH Genetic & Rare Diseases Information Center (GARD)
  • Disease-specific patient advocacy groups
  • Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM)
  • Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD)
  • In many rare disorders, it may be necessary to conduct medical literature research to gain a more complete profile of the disease, as sources such as Orphanet may only have cursory descriptions and epidemiology estimates

Pricing Information (US)

(note: ex-US information is generally paywalled or geo-restricted)

  • First Databank has an extensive history of Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC), while SSR Health can provide both gross (WAC) and net pricing
  • 46brooklyn is a non-profit research organization focusing on drug pricing
  • Costco and GoodRx are decent sources for estimating list pricing, as their price quotes are often close to WAC

Promotional Effort

  • Has syndicated reports for selected therapeutic areas. Also has database covering US, Europe, Japan, and Brazil

Clinical Trials

  • These sources may also list study sites located outside the US and EU

NME/NBE Probability of Success

  • Probability of success is broken out by development stage and therapeutic area

Pipeline Product Competitive Intelligence

  • Information on development stage, mechanism of action, and available preclinical and clinical data

Other Sources

  • Useful for disease and product background (including epidemiology) and product sales

Disease Background Information