Wolters Kluwer gets FDA contract

Wolters Kluwer Health, an information and intelligence business including for the pharmaceutical industry, has been awarded a multi-year contract to provide both prescription and patient-level data to the US Food and Drug Administration to supply the agency with insight into the prevalence of prescription drug utilization within the US population. "This is the first time Wolters Kluwer Health has been selected as a primary source for this prestigious contract," the firm says.

"The FDA is always looking for ways to employ newer and better technology to support research toward a safer environment for patients and their decision to utilize our unique, longitudinal drug data fits right into this progression," said Mark Spiers, chief executive of Wolters Kluwer Health's Healthcare Analytics business.

According to FDA specifications, Wolters Kluwer's data will "report national patterns of drug utilization in the outpatient setting" and examine "concomitant use of multiple drug products" over the same time period. To achieve this, the company is to analyze a statistically-reliable sample of patients over time to allow the FDA to examine patterns of drug utilization within the American population.