Analysis Group Announces Collaboration to Improve Blood Disease Research and Treatment in China

Analysis Group is collaborating with China’s Institute of Hematology & Blood Diseases Hospital (IHBDH) to develop the country’s first blood disorders research platform to analyze real-world data in an effort to improve patient care.

“Our goal is to set up a world-class hematological [blood disorders] research platform that advances the patient-centric study of hematology in China,” Eric Wu, Analysis Group’s managing principal, said in a press release. “This is a complex challenge that has not been well addressed in China. We are excited to collaborate with IHBDH on this important undertaking.”

The evolution of the Chinese healthcare system has been mainly limited by the lack of high-quality medical data from patients. In addition, differences in genetics, cultural conditions, diet, and pollution exposure of the Chinese population make generalizations of clinical data from other populations unreliable.

In their partnership, Analysis Group and IHBDH — a clinical and research institute of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College — aim to improve patient care related to blood diseases by creating this new platform, called National Longitudinal Cohort of Hematological Diseases in China (NICHE). The project will be funded by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

NICHE will gather real-world clinical data from more than 10,000 Chinese living with blood diseases, including multiple myeloma, lymphoma, leukemia, and hemophilia, making it the largest Chinese real-world database for blood disorders.

Data collection will start with patients being treated at IHBDH and eventually expand to those treated at 140 public hospitals that are part of the China Hematology Alliance.

NICHE is expected to provide the foundation to better evaluate treatment patterns, effectiveness, and safety, as well as help clinicians and policy creators make more informed decisions.

“Access to reliable information about patients is a major challenge in treating blood disease in China,” said Tao Cheng, MD, IHBDH’s scientific director and deputy president.

“There is a significant gap in the treatment for hematological diseases in China compared to other developed countries,” said Cheng, who gave the example of the lower five-year survival rates of leukemia and lymphoma patients in China, compared with those in the U.S. (25% vs. 62% for leukemia and 37% vs. 72% for lymphoma).

Jianxiang Wang, IHBDH’s medical director, added: “It is our aim to improve the survival rate and improve the quality of life of patients throughout China. Making the right health care decisions that lead to improved patient outcomes requires being able to look at real-world evidence on relevant populations.”

The project includes the creation of a scientific advisory committee to help in several aspects of platform design and data collection, including the determination of patient selection criteria, an efficient method of data collection, and the best practices for quality control. The committee will be composed of experts in blood disorders, health policy and economics, biopharma, bioinformatics, and biotechnology.

Analysis Group and IHBDH plan to begin collecting patient data in this month. Once the platform and its data are established, IHBDH will start accepting requests from researchers and clinicians to access NICHE data, which is expected to be available for study by the end of 2021.