How the Premier Healthcare Database supports real-world evidence: Insights from research presented at ISPOR 2026
This interview brings together researchers from Premier Applied Sciences to discuss five studies presented at ISPOR 2026, all drawing on the Premier Healthcare Database (PHD), one of the most comprehensive electronic healthcare data repositories and the largest chargemaster database in the US, capturing around 25% of annual inpatient admissions.
The authors explain the methodological strengths of the PHD, summarize each study's key findings, and reflect on what the evidence means for clinicians, payers, and health systems. The posters discussed cover:
- Real-world utilization of tarlatamab in routine clinical practice
- Economic burden of hospital‑onset MRSA bloodstream infections
- Obesity prevalence among US hospitalized patients
- Burden of complicated urinary tract infections in hospitalized adult patients
- Impact of comorbid insomnia on long-term outcomes in fibromyalgia
Spanning oncology, infectious disease, obesity, and chronic pain, these studies span a broad set of therapeutic areas and share a common thread: using large-scale, real-world data to complement clinical trial evidence and inform decision-making in routine practice. Read the full interview for the complete methodology, data, and author insights behind each poster.
About the interviewees
Chendi Cui, PhD, MS, MBBS
Principal Research Scientist, Premier Applied Sciences
Chendi Cui is a Principal Research Scientist at Premier Applied Sciences, where she specializes in applying advanced epidemiologic and biostatistical methods to real-world research in cancer, cardiovascular disease and infectious disease. She has extensive experience with health insurance claims databases, electronic medical records and laboratory data, and has led numerous retrospective studies and clinical program evaluations. Dr Cui's research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences.
Laura Curry, PhD, MS, BA
Principal Research Analyst, Premier Applied Sciences
Laura Curry is a Principal Research Analyst for Premier Applied Sciences, the research and analytics division of Premier. She has over 25 years of experience in exploratory, predictive and confirmatory factor analysis, study design, research, survey design and data reconciliation across various contexts, including social science research, teaching and learning, economics and actuarial consulting. She received a master’s and doctorate degree in developmental psychology from the University of Florida and has co-written several peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national conferences.
Ning An Rosenthal, MD, PhD, MPH
Assistant Vice President of Applied Research, Premier Applied Sciences
Dr Ning An Rosenthal serves as Assistant Vice President of Applied Research at Premier Applied Sciences, leading a multidisciplinary team in designing and executing methodologically rigorous research studies in collaboration with life sciences companies, government agencies, and academic institutions. With over 20 years of experience in clinical, epidemiological, and health economics and outcomes research, she is widely recognized as an expert in RWE studies, serving as subject matter expert and chief scientist for observational, pragmatic, and interventional studies. Her research has supported regulatory submissions, post-market safety assessments, and disease burden evaluations, with findings published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at national and international conferences. Dr Rosenthal earned her MD from West China University of Medical Sciences, MPH from Peking Union Medical College, and PhD in Epidemiology from University of California, Los Angeles.
Rena Moon, MD, MPH
Associate Principal – Applied Research, Premier Applied Sciences
Rena Moon is an Associate Principal – Applied Research for Premier Applied Sciences. In this role, she leads retrospective research projects using hospital discharge, laboratory, and/or claims databases in areas of clinical outcomes research, comparative effectiveness, safety, and pharmacoeconomics. She also leads prospective research projects and supports pragmatic clinical trials. In addition, she drives internal standardization efforts and mentors interns and junior researchers. She has more than 14 years of academic research experience using administrative and clinical (e.g., EMR) data and statistical methods. Her extensive list of peer-reviewed publications and national and international presentations include infectious diseases, surgical outcomes, and childhood and adult obesity. Prior to joining Premier, Dr Moon was a Research Scientist at Orlando Health, where she led all research projects at the Department of Bariatric Surgery. She designed retrospective and prospective studies; wrote statistical analysis plans, manuscripts, abstracts, and oral and poster presentations; performed data management and analysis as well as secondary data analysis using national databases; and mentored undergraduates, medical students and surgical residents. Dr Moon earned her MD from Korea University School of Medicine and her MPH in Applied Epidemiology at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health where she was elected a member of the Phi chapter of the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health. She is also a Certified Base Programmer for SAS 9 and uses both SAS and R for statistical analyses.
Guilherme Lopes, PhD
Principal Research Scientist, Premier Applied Sciences
Dr Gui Lopes is a Principal Research Scientist for Premier Applied Sciences, where he oversees all steps of multiple research projects for pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Dr Lopes has extensive experience with retrospective cohort studies, with expertise in applied epidemiologic methods and advanced biostatistics techniques in areas such as burden of illness, healthcare resource utilization and costs, pharmacogenomics, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and infectious diseases. He also has experience with validation studies of natural language processing (NLP) queries. He has experience with data sources including electronic medical records (EMR), hospital administrative databases, laboratory databases, pharmacogenomic databases, and prospective data collection. Prior to working at Premier, Dr Lopes worked at the Mayo Clinic where he served as co-investigator in multiple NIH grants, having his research selected for multiple national awards. He has co-led research in cancer clinical trials involving international collaboration of 15+ countries. In addition, he was the principal investigator of a project exploring the pharmacogenomics of opioid analgesics that combined complex EMR and PGx databases, and during the 2020 pandemic he provided critical weekly reports on COVID-19 to community, local, and State partners in Minnesota. He has presented his research at national and international conferences and has published scientific articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals. Dr Lopes holds a PhD degree in Psychometrics and Women's Health from Oakland University (2018) and has 40+ peer-reviewed publications.
Rheana Lipscomb
Research Associate, Premier Applied Sciences
Rheana Lipscomb is a Research Associate for the Premier Applied Sciences team. In her role, she supports Research Scientists across the Applied Research team with project deliverables, business development tasks, and internal initiatives. Ms Lipscomb received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Lycoming College. She received her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology. Prior to her role with Premier, Ms Lipscomb worked for 2 years as an Infection Preventionist for the UPMC health system, where she led numerous successful interdisciplinary interventions to reduce hospital acquired infections, with a focus on central line blood steam infections (CLASBIs) and Clostridioides difficile (CDI). In this role, she also led the Infection Control Committee and was a member of the hospital Quality and Patient Safety Councils. Ms Lipscomb was awarded a UPMC Patient Safety award in her role as an Infection Preventionist in 2023. She has also worked as a Research Specialist in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry for the UPMC health system as part of the NIH’s NeuroBioBank.
Joy David
Manager of Data & Research Analytics, Premier Applied Sciences
Joy David is a Manager of Data & Research Analytics for Premier Applied Sciences. She has more than 20 years of experience in software engineering, SQL programming, engineering support and data analytics. Prior to joining Premier, she led the Data Analytics and Engineering Support groups of Precision Digital Health and was responsible to oversee all the analytic and support operations. She also was a Senior Software Engineer for Parexel and led one of the engineering support groups of the company where she worked closely with both internal and external clients on projects related to clinical trials. She has extensive SQL, VB.Net, C#, R and Python experience. She has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science with concentration in Information Technology.
Sunday Ikpe, MBBCh, PhD
Principal Research Analyst, Premier Applied Sciences
Dr Ikpe has 20+ years of experience in medicine and information technology and has worked in a variety of settings including the private sector, consulting for government, and international development organizations. He has worked previously as a health informatics expert, playing critical roles in mutimillion-dollar projects sponsored by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) across sub-Saharan Africa. He holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Human Genetics from the University of Maryland Baltimore, where his focus was on computational epidemiology. His years of experience and skills include epidemiological methods, biostatistics, machine learning, software engineering and research (covering areas such as study design, survey analysis, time series analysis and geospatial analysis). He possesses dexterity and skills with tools including SQL, SAS, R, Python and big data tools. In his current role as Principal Research Analyst, he works closely with research scientists, using real-world evidence in research studies for pharmaceutical, medical device, and life science companies using hospital discharge, laboratory, and claims databases. Dr Ikpe is a life-long learner with a passion for teaching and mentoring. He has authored multiple scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals.
Shanthi Krishnaswami, MBBS., MP
Principal Research Scientist, Premier Applied Sciences
Shanthi Krishnaswami is a Principal Research Scientist for the Premier Applied Sciences team, Premier’s research division. In this role, she contributes to multiple business development activities as well as support team efforts and lead funded projects to deliver products with high quality. Dr Krishnaswami has more than 25 years of experience in the fields of Medicine and Public Health. She is a physician and an epidemiologist and has worked in various roles in several research projects in areas including cardiomyopathy, myocardial infarction, developmental disabilities, autoimmune diseases, hypertension, obesity, infectious disease, comparative effectiveness of surgical, pharmacologic intervention studies and drug overdose. She has experience working with several data sources including electronic medical records (EMR), hospital administrative databases, controlled substance monitoring databases, claims and laboratory databases. She has actively participated in the preparation of documents needed for an IND submission of a real-world evidence study for label expansion. She has many years of research experience including research methodology, data management, statistical data analysis, systematic reviews of biomedical literature, summarizing results for conferences and journal publications, reviewing study protocols, preparing IRB applications, and generating study reports. She has successfully collaborated with other researchers from different fields of medicine and produced more than 65 peer-reviewed medical and public health publications. She has also mentored medical students and junior epidemiologists on research methodology and data analytics. Before joining Premier, she was an epidemiologist with the Tennessee department of health working on fatal and nonfatal drug overdose surveillance projects and prior to that she had worked in academic institutions providing data management/analytical support/serving as a staff scientist. Dr Krishnaswami earned her medical degree (MBBS) from the University of Madras, India and MPH in epidemiology from University of South Carolina, USA. Her interests are to improve patient care by facilitating better clinical decision making at the point of care and extending to public health domain.
Zhun Cao, PhD, MA
Senior Principal, Applied Research, Premier Applied Sciences
As a Senior Principal of Applied Research in Premier Applied Sciences, Dr Cao has over 20 years of experience in healthcare service and outcomes research. Dr Cao coleads the Applied Research team consisting of research scientists, analysts and biostatisticians. She has extensive experience in observational cross-sectional studies, case-control studies, cohort studies, and comprehensive studies involving retrospective and prospective research. Dr Cao has consulted with pharmaceutical and medical device companies, as well as government agencies, covering clinical areas such as infectious diseases, maternal health, oncology, cardiovascular disease, pain management, critical care, surgeries, and mental health. The types of studies she has conducted include comparative effectiveness studies, healthcare resource utilization and cost studies, market analysis, and burden of illness. Before joining Premier, Dr Cao was a research leader at Truven Health Analytics (now Merative). Before that position, she was associate director for methodological affairs at the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research in Cambridge Health Alliance, with a joint faculty appointment as an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Dr Cao has presented her research at national and international conferences and published scientific articles in peer-reviewed economics, medical, and health policy journals. Dr Cao received a master’s degree in political economy and a doctorate degree in economics with focuses on health economics and applied econometrics from Boston University.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Premier Applied Sciences leadership team for their support of this study and the Premier data team for making the data available for analysis.
Disclaimers
The opinions expressed in this feature are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Evidence Base® or Becaris Publishing Ltd.
Sponsorship for this Interview was provided by Premier Applied Sciences.