SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Verana Health®—a digital health company elevating quality in real-world data—will present an abstract at the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) Biopharmaceutical Section Regulatory-Industry Statistics Workshop on Sept. 21 in Rockville, Md.
Presented by Meghan Hatfield, MPH, a member of Verana Health’s Quantitative Sciences Team, the abstract discusses how data missing from the electronic health records (EHRs) of patients with diabetic retinopathy (DR) can impact insights about diagnoses and treatment. The abstract also details how de-identified data from the American Academy of Ophthalmology IRIS® Registry (Intelligent Research in Sight) was used to understand the mechanism of data missingness in DR cases, which is an important first step to help identify how best to limit biases in observational studies and help clinicians better understand the disease’s progression.
DR is a chronic, progressive disease and a leading cause of blindness. While International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes can be used in observational EHR studies, disease severity may be missing from the records of patients with DR when unspecified ICD codes are used. Unspecified clinical encounters can be excluded in research studies, which potentially can introduce selection bias and reduce the number of patients eligible for the study.
A team of nine Verana Health researchers sought to understand the mechanism of missingness for DR disease severity. Using de-identified data from the IRIS Registry, Verana Health identified all encounters with a DR ICD code from January 1, 2014 to June 30, 2021. Researchers compared clinical and demographic characteristics between encounters with specified and unspecified disease severity.
Following the presentation of “Assessing Missing Data Mechanisms for Unspecified Diabetic Retinopathy Disease Severity Encounters in the Electronic Health Record: An IRIS Registry Analysis” at 11:30 a.m. in room RL23, Hatfield will participate in a roundtable discussion of the Verana Health team’s findings.
“Missingness in real-world data is a significant issue that can make it difficult for researchers to extract meaningful insights from observational studies,” said Hatfield. “However, our findings suggest that unspecified clinical encounters are likely associated with less severe DR.”
The annual ASA Biopharmaceutical Section Regulatory-Industry Statistics Workshop is sponsored by the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section in cooperation with the FDA Statistical Association. The three-day conference features invited sessions co-chaired by statisticians from industry, academia and the FDA.
“Research such as this really addresses the common data issues that surface in observational studies and demonstrates how leveraging technology can allow us to directly and effectively mitigate them,” said Aracelis Torres, PhD, MPH, senior vice president of customer solutions and quantitative sciences for Verana Health. “Understanding the mechanism of missingness can help inform the methods, such as imputation, that would most appropriately handle incomplete data to recognize disease progression and limit biases in observational studies.”
About Verana Health
Verana Health® is a digital health company elevating quality in real-world data. Verana Health operates an exclusive real-world data network of more than 20,000 healthcare providers (HCPs) and about 90 million de-identified patients, stemming from its strategic data partnerships with the American Academy of Ophthalmology®, American Academy of Neurology, and American Urological Association. Using its clinician-informed and artificial intelligence-enhanced VeraQ™ population health data engine, Verana Health transforms structured and unstructured healthcare data into curated, disease-specific data modules, Qdata™. Verana Health’s Qdata helps power analytics solutions and software-as-a-service products for real-world evidence generation, clinical trials enablement, HCP quality reporting, and medical registry data management. Verana Health’s quality data and insights help drive progress in medicine to enhance the quality of care and quality of life for patients. For more information, visit www.veranahealth.com.
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