WILMINGTON, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HealthCore, Inc. the clinical outcomes-based research subsidiary for WellPoint, has contracted with the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute as a data and intellectual partner in supporting the Sentinel System, a program that uses electronic health care data to monitor the safety of FDA-regulated drugs and other medical products.
HealthCore is one of the original partners that began working with Harvard Pilgrim in the Sentinel pilot, dubbed the “Mini-Sentinel,” which used electronic healthcare data of millions of people to assess potential risks of marketed medical products.
Today, the arrangement spans 50 health care and academic organizations nationally. The Sentinel Initiative, using expertise of scientists from several academic and other institutions, has built a distributed data network and analytic tools that have enabled the federal government to investigate safety questions about regulated medical products.
“We are proud to have been part of the Mini-Sentinel, a ground-breaking effort in drug and medical product safety that produced studies on a variety of immunizations, biologics, and drugs that have made a significant impact in healthcare,” said Nandini Selvam, site principal investigator for HealthCore. “And, we look forward to furthering this work and expanding on new questions asked of the Sentinel System.”
The new five-year contract between HealthCore and Harvard Pilgrim begins in 2015.
Harvard Pilgrim was awarded a $150 million contract with the FDA to enhance the existing capabilities of the Sentinel System with the goal of addressing a larger array of questions for the FDA. The program may explore ways for other sponsors to use the program’s infrastructure to address additional public health concerns, including the quality of medical care, the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments in common use, biomedical research questions and a range of medical research surveillance questions.
About HealthCore, Inc.
HealthCore, based in Wilmington, Del., is the clinical outcomes research subsidiary of WellPoint, Inc. HealthCore has a team of highly experienced researchers including physicians, biostatisticians, pharmacists, epidemiologists, health economists and other scientists who study the “real world” safety and effectiveness of drugs, medical devices and care management interventions. HealthCore offers insight on how to best use this data and communicates these findings to health care decision makers to support evidence based medicine, product development decisions, safety monitoring, coverage decisions, process improvement and overall cost effective health care. For more information, go to www.healthcore.com.