Inovalon and OMNY Health link claims and EHR data for real-world evidence research

Inovalon and OMNY Health have announced a partnership to develop a linked real-world dataset combining claims, electronic health records, and clinical notes for real-world evidence research.

The Baseline

• Inovalon and OMNY Health have partnered to develop a linked real-world dataset combining claims, electronic health records, and clinical notes.
• The dataset is intended to support research into disease progression, treatment patterns, patient outcomes, and healthcare utilization.
• The collaboration aims to support real-world evidence and HEOR by linking clinical and economic information.

The dataset includes closed claims covering 248 million lives, electronic health record (EHR) data covering 175 million lives, and more than seven billion clinical notes. According to the companies, more than 40% of lives are linked across these sources.

Inovalon is contributing what it describes as primary-source closed claims data, while OMNY Health is providing structured and unstructured EHR data and clinical notes. The linked information is intended for use by researchers and life sciences organizations examining disease progression, treatment patterns, and patient outcomes.

These sources provide different types of information for real-world evidence (RWE) studies. Closed claims can provide longitudinal information on healthcare utilization and costs across providers, payers, and care settings, while EHR data and clinical notes can include medical history, test results, disease-specific scores and markers, and provider- or patient-reported outcomes. Linking them is intended to allow researchers to examine healthcare utilization alongside clinical information within the same dataset.

“True innovation in medicine requires looking beyond the codes on a medical bill to understand the actual human experience of a disease,” said Mitesh Rao, MD, CEO of OMNY Health. “By linking Inovalon’s massive longitudinal claims engine with OMNY’s deep, unstructured clinical data and physician notes, we are giving researchers the closest thing to a complete, real-world patient narrative.”

The dataset is intended to support research across therapeutic areas, with the companies citing Alzheimer’s disease as one potential application. As patients age and their disease progresses, they may move between insurance plans, which can affect the continuity of information available from individual data sources. Claims data can provide longitudinal information across these transitions, while clinical notes may document changes in cognitive status. Linking these sources is intended to allow both healthcare use and changes in disease status to be examined over time.

The collaboration is also intended to support HEOR, including analyses combining clinical and economic information. Ed Chidsey, President of Inovalon’s RWD & Insights and Payer Business Units, said:

“HEOR teams are under growing pressure to generate evidence that is clinically rich, economically defensible, and compliant.”