Medlior Health Outcomes Research and Carnall Farrar partnership expands multinational real-world evidence generation with UK and Canada data

Medlior Health Outcomes Research and Carnall Farrar (CF) have announced a partnership under the Access Innovation BioBridge program to support multinational real-world evidence (RWE) studies using population-scale healthcare data from England and Alberta.

The partnership will initially focus on cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic conditions, including cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease (CKD), type 2 diabetes, and obesity. By conducting protocol-aligned analyses in both jurisdictions, the organizations aim to generate insights that can be compared across healthcare systems and applied in different regulatory and policy contexts.

A central objective of the collaboration is to examine how evidence generated in one health system may translate to another.

“CF has a long history of using whole-population health data from the UK to improve outcomes and support research,” said Ben Richardson, Managing Partner for Life Sciences at CF. “By combining CF’s access to linked, pseudonymized NHS data with Medlior’s Alberta cohorts, we can address a critical question for sponsors: to what extent does evidence generated in one health system transport to another?”

The collaboration brings together complementary health data resources from two universal healthcare systems. CF provides access to linked NHS England datasets covering more than 57 million individuals, while Medlior contributes expertise analyzing Alberta’s population-level administrative health data covering over 5 million residents. These data enable longitudinal analyses of disease progression, treatment patterns, healthcare utilization, and outcomes across large patient populations.

Both organizations note that population-scale datasets allow researchers to follow individuals across the healthcare pathway over extended periods. The data capture demographic characteristics, diagnostic coding, healthcare activity, and costing information within consistent system frameworks, supporting analyses of disease burden, treatment patterns, and resource use.

Methodological work is also underway to harmonize data structures and coding systems across the two jurisdictions. While both countries use internationally recognized disease classification systems, mapping approaches are required to align diagnostic, procedural, and medication coding, as well as healthcare resource utilization measures across inpatient, outpatient, and emergency care settings.

“Our population-level cohorts, alongside Alberta’s comprehensive pharmacy data, complement CF’s UK platform – together we can deliver faster and deeper insights across borders to support decision-grade evidence needs,” said Tara Cowling, President of Medlior.

To maintain national governance requirements, analyses will be conducted separately within each jurisdiction using aligned protocols. Results will be reported as comparable aggregated outputs rather than pooled patient-level datasets, ensuring that identifiable data remain within their respective regulatory frameworks.

Jaspreet Grewal, CEO and Co-Founder of AxialBridge and Managing Partner of the Access Innovation BioBridge program, said the initiative reflects the program’s objective of strengthening cross-border research collaboration:

“By facilitating access to complementary healthcare datasets and regulatory frameworks, we’re helping to build the infrastructure that will drive the next generation of pharmaceutical research and development across UK–Canada corridors.”