Verana Health unveils Qdata Anti-VEGF Market Tracker

The Qdata Anti-VEGF Market Tracker actively tracks real-world usage of anti-VEGF therapies in de-identified patients with retinal conditions and provides granular market segmentation down to the brand level. (Image Credit: AdobeStock/Jintana)

Verana Health announced the availability of its first market tracking Data as a Service (DaaS) product, which provides accurate and timely data and insights into product performance and market dynamics with direct data access.

According to a company news release, the Qdata Anti-VEGF Market Tracker – powered by real-world data (RWD) from the American Academy of Ophthalmology (Academy) IRIS Registry – actively tracks real-world usage of anti-VEGF therapies in de-identified patients with retinal conditions and provides granular market segmentation down to the brand level.

The company noted the solution is available via a secure cloud infrastructure supported by a highly intuitive visualization layer in the form of customizable market dashboards. Verana Health is available in AWS Data Exchange, a service that makes it easy for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers to find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud with AWS.

In 2022, the company’s anti-VEGF market tracker covered more than 850,000 de-identified patients and more than 4.8 million anti-VEGF injections from more than 2,300 clinicians across 6 key indications. This comprehensive module is the result of securely and compliantly curating de-identified structured and unstructured electronic health record (EHR) data that can be segmented by brand, geography, patient demographics, clinician subspecialty type, and more, to deliver insights for commercial teams.

The company noted its anti-VEGF market tracker can also be analyzed by Verana Health's Quantitative Sciences team to deliver custom insights to life sciences companies about the use of anti-VEGF treatments.

By providing an overview of market share by drug and information about medication switching, the Qdata Anti-VEGF Market Tracker can help inform commercial planning and sales forecasting, or assess marketing campaign effectiveness. Life sciences companies can also use the module to customize data reporting and monitor market uptake for their products.

Verana also noted that multiple anti-VEGF agents are currently available to treat patients with retinal diseases, and relying on claims data to monitor the use of these therapies may not provide customers with enough recency, or brand granularity, in the absence of specific billing codes. The ability to distinguish between specific brands/products is of particular importance with several biosimilar anti-VEGF agents launching in the U.S. market. While claims data can take up to three months to be available, RWD from Verana Health's new market tracking offering has only a 1-month data lag, giving customers more recent data and insights that they can quickly act upon.

Sujay Jadhav, CEO of Verana Health, noted in a news release the anti-VEGF market is highly competitive and rapidly growing.

“The companies selling these agents need fresh, comprehensive, and accurate real-world market data," Jadhav said in the news release. "Our Qdata Anti-VEGF Market Tracker module, and the vast amounts of data curated from the IRIS Registry, will support the longitudinal data and real-world evidence needed to effectively monitor the market and help inform commercial strategies."

The company noted VEGF promotes the development of new blood vessels. However, when cells produce excessive amounts of VEGF, abnormal blood vessels may form in a person's eyes and leak fluid into the retina. This can cause swelling and may lead to vision loss in patients with various retinal diseases such as neovascular wet age-related macular degeneration (nAMD), diabetic macular edema, diabetic retinopathy, or retinal vein occlusion.

Moreover, the company pointed out anti-VEGF agents are the standard of care therapy used to treat patients with nAMD, a primary cause of blindness around the globe. These medications block VEGF, and prevent the formation of abnormal blood vessels. Anti-VEGF agents can slow down vision loss and, in some cases, improve a patient's eyesight.

Launched in 2014, the IRIS Registry is one of the largest specialty society clinical data registries in medicine and the first comprehensive eye disease clinical registry in the U.S. The IRIS Registry includes data on 2.2 million patients who received anti-VEGF injections as of 2023