The life sciences industry currently has access to more real-world data (RWD) than at any point in its history. Open claims, closed payer claims, EMR, lab, specialty pharmacy and biomarkers — and yet, most commercial and evidence teams still operate with a fragmented and limited view of the patient. The common instinct has been to simply pile on more data sources, more vendors and more coverage, resulting in analytics teams drowning in data. More data isn't the enemy. The problem is that without the right underlying data model, more data sources just means more integration, ETL, privacy certifications and time before you can act on any of it.
This legacy approach to patient/physician insights is the #1 reason that pharma/biotechs miss critical decision windows. Teams can spend months stitching together data from disparate vendors, each with its own contract, privacy certification, data model and QA process. By the time the data is finally analytics- and AI-ready, the opportunity to act has narrowed or passed. It's an infrastructure issue that is costing you time and money and nothing has been making it easier.
The patients exist, you just can’t find them
Most data solutions assume someone already knows what questions you'll be asking. Rigid data models and pre-assembled bundles work fine when your questions fit the mold. For primary care, they often do. In oncology, rare disease, personalized medicine and cell or gene therapy, they rarely do. The result is not only incomplete data, but invisible patients and missed market opportunity.
For example, in some use cases, patients are few and their healthcare journeys span points of care that open claims miss entirely. In one narcolepsy case study using real-world data from HealthVerity Marketplace, closed payer claims surfaced patient and HCP populations at 194x the rate of open claims.1 This is not because the patients were hidden, but because the distribution network couldn't license data under its manufacturer contract. Another example comes from a rheumatoid arthritis study. Layering open medical diagnosis with open pharmacy, then anchoring in closed claims, surfaced 184% more patients and 208% more HCPs than open sources could reveal.1
Your legacy data model wasn’t built for the questions you’re asking now
Today, the questions that life sciences teams need to answer have outgrown the contracts that govern their data. Regulators want more evidence. Leadership wants it faster. AI is doing more of the heavy lifting on analytics and it can only be as good as the data fed into it.
Your legacy data model can’t keep up. It was a process that was built on sourcing from multiple aggregators, managing separate privacy certifications and waiting months for data to be analytics-ready. It was not built for the speed and complexity the industry now requires. Every week spent building infrastructure is a week not spent on the work.
The foundation you actually want is privacy-certified, de-duped and AI-ready before it reaches you. It plugs into your existing workflow. It surfaces more patients than you've seen before, across more of their journey, with more clinical detail. And it gets there in weeks, not months. Until now.
A platform built for breakthroughs
HealthVerity recently acquired Symphony Health to solve this exact problem.2 Symphony brings forty years of trusted aggregator status, industry-leading open pharmacy coverage and IC-grade medical benefit data built for commercial teams. HealthVerity brings the nation's largest real-world data ecosystem including open and closed claims, laboratory data and nearly a dozen EHR sources, with a patient identity infrastructure that accurately integrates hundreds of millions of patient journeys.
Together, HealthVerity now offers more than 100 linked, privacy-compliant data sources across open and closed claims, lab, EHR, specialty pharmacy and biomarkers — one HIPAA certification, one contract and simplified common data models. With over 340 million patient lives and 250 billion-plus transactions, including both national labs and 6 of the top 10 closed payers, the market that open claims usually misses is now truly visible.
The data arrives the way you expect it - ready to plug into your existing workflow and analytics stack of choice. Commercial teams see a +129% patient lift and +21% HCP lift in specialty TAs. Up to 56% of Decile 6-7 HCPs re-rank on combined data — the band where targeting and incentive compensation decisions are most sensitive. These are patients and providers your current data cannot show you.*
There is no other place in life sciences where you can get this.
Your window is closing. Don’t miss it.
The stakes are high. Rare disease programs are getting smaller and more precise while payers demand more proof they work. AI is moving faster than the data beneath it can support. Every decision made on incomplete data is a risk that compounds.
The industry has spent years treating fragmented data infrastructure as an unavoidable cost of doing business. It isn't. It's a choice that’s costing you patients, time and decisions you didn't know you were missing.
You don't have to build the infrastructure anymore or wait months to see the market. The data can arrive already linked, certified, de-duped and AI-ready from day one, plugged into the workflows you already have.
The only question is whether you're working from the most comprehensive picture available, or still settling for less.
Learn more…
Want to see what the most comprehensive data ecosystem in life sciences looks like in practice? Explore how HealthVerity and Symphony Health are helping commercial and evidence teams see more patients, make faster decisions and work from a foundation built for whatever comes next. Visit healthverity.com.
Sources:
- HealthVerity Marketplace. HealthVerity. https://healthverity.com/marketplace/
- HealthVerity completes acquisition of Symphony Health, marking a new era for the healthcare data industry. HealthVerity. May 8, 2026. https://healthverity.com/news/healthverity-completes-acquisition-of-symphony-health-marking-a-new-era-for-the-healthcare-data-industry
*These figures are based on a sample therapeutic area and illustrate the potential uplift. Results will vary based on your specific use case, therapeutic area, and target audience.