What is your role at Norstella?
I lead the RWD Engagement function at Norstella, a relatively new team comprised of consultants, managers, directors, clinicians, and researchers who live and breathe Norstella RWD data daily. The team is hands-on with claims, lab and EMR data, and their role is making sure the work we deliver from a real-world data (RWD) perspective not only meets expectations, but leaves a strong, lasting impression. I want clients to walk away thinking, That was great—let’s work with Norstella again. Whether it’s renewing, expanding, or bringing us along to a new company, the goal is to make our data, and our services, indispensable.
Tell us about your real-world data expertise.
I’ve been in healthcare analytics for almost 20 years now. I kind of stumbled into pharma—about 12 or 14 years ago when I joined a small life sciences consulting firm that used claims data to support their payer strategy. That’s where I learned SQL and really got my hands dirty. I traveled a lot, talked to pharma clients, learned how to interpret the data—and never looked back.
What’s been one of the most rewarding or exciting projects that you’ve been a part of and why?
We’re still early in implementation, but some of the derived metrics the team has put together shed a new light on clinical trial performance and opportunity to get more patients involved in clinical trials, with the end goal of accelerating the time to market for Phase III assets.
What does a day in the life of a real-world data analyst look like at Norstella?
Honestly, most of the work comes down to problem-solving. Our clients are trying to solve a problem—that’s why they came to us. We work with them to understand what they’re trying to accomplish/solve for and then translate that into specifications that can be mapped on to RWD. From there we take the RWD and either deliver it so that they can use it to answer their questions, or we analyze the data to answer the questions for them. A typical day is a mix of talking with clients, analyzing data in SQL or IHD, and putting together insights in Excel and PPT.
What types of problems does real-world data help pharma solve?
Broadly, we are helping clients accelerate patient access to therapies using NorstellaLinQ RWD. On the commercial side, we’re doing that through patient identification, patient-journey mapping, HCP targeting/segmentation, and field triggers/alerts. On the medical/HEOR side, we’re partnering to quantify the clinical and economic burden of disease so that clients can best articulate the value proposition of their therapies. On the clinical side, we’re helping accelerate clinical trials through site identification and patient altering for trial sites.
When you’re not analyzing data, what do you like to do?
Tennis and travel are my go-tos. I live in Colorado, so with its amazing outdoor scene, we’re always hiking or exploring. That’s why we moved here—Boston winters are no joke! With two kids, it’s great to have space and sunshine.