Data from Greater Bay Area’s 88 million residents to help improve healthcare policy: GSK

British pharmaceutical company GSK is turning to patient data gathered from the 88 million residents of the Greater Bay Area’s 11 cities to speed up drug development in vaccines and cancer care, as officials push for closer cross-border medical cooperation.

GSK Hong Kong and Macau general manager Nicholas Teo said patient data was very important because it could form “supplementary evidence” to support regulatory filings and potential label expansions, and also help to “discover benefits other than the medication itself”.

Vaccines were one example, Teo said last week. While their effectiveness against target diseases such as flu, shingles and respiratory syncytial virus was well established, he said researchers were increasingly studying potential benefits relating to cardiovascular health and neurological outcomes, which might help generate additional evidence and insights for future healthcare decision-making.

Teo said GSK’s expertise lay in vaccination and disease prevention, citing shingles and respiratory syncytial virus as key areas, with the viral liver infection hepatitis B another area of focus. He added that GSK also had a growing oncology and haematology portfolio.

The bay area is a Chinese government scheme aimed at integrating Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in mainland China’s Guangdong province into a single economic and business hub. Their combined gross domestic product last year was more than US$2.23 trillion, according to official data.

GSK signed a memorandum of understanding in September last year with the University of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area International Clinical Trial Institute on a study to examine the long-term health effects of the shingles vaccine.

Teo said GSK would provide financial sponsorship for the HKU-led study and was also investing in shared data infrastructure. The company could access patient data through the partnership, such as data coming from hospitals and government agencies, but pharmaceutical companies did not have direct access to it on their own, he added.