Use of Population Data

Surveys show that the American public supports having their personal health information used in research to inform public policy and practice, as long as appropriate privacy protections are in place. Large, population-level healthcare databases enable researchers to discover answers to questions that can not be found with individual studies or clinical trials alone. By aggregating data from many sources, population studies can help to evaluate health care treatment patterns, examine the quality of care being delivered to patients, identify disparities in treatment and outcomes, and estimate the economic burden of disease on individuals and society.

While randomized clinical trials remain extremely important in generating clinical knowledge, there are practical and resource limitations on the number of patients that can be involved in each trial. Some clinical benefits and risks will only become evident when sufficiently large numbers of patients are studied. Population-level databases can provide evidence of the benefits and risks of medical intervention among large numbers of patients treated in a variety of practice settings in the community. This evidence in return provides better information for health planners and policymakers, while also informing the development of clinical guidelines and clinical decision support systems.