Drugmakers Mine Data for Trial Patients

Pharmaceutical companies can easily spend years—and more than $1 billion—bringing a new drug to market, in part because they can’t find enough patients to do the required testing of the compound. Such delays can cost up to $1 million a day, fritter away valuable months of patent protection, and allow rival developers to catch up. One remedy: pay hospitals to sift through the health records of their patients.

Five big drugmakers, led by Pfizer, are planning to use electronic health data gathered from patients of 13 hospital systems across New York State to help them identify and enroll participants in drug studies. The effort, which begins testing this month, is projected to make $75 million a year for the hospitals and save the pharmaceutical companies time and money in developing new products. “This is going to be a game changer, making medicine more of a science and less of an art,” says John Murphy, senior director of clinical analytics for Quintiles Transnational, which helps drugmakers conduct trials.