Regions
MAIN/REGIONS
regions/
Regions
  1. Americas
  2. Asia & Oceania
  3. Europe
  4. Middle East & Africa
  1. Solutions
  2. Products
  3. Insights
  4. About
  5. Careers
  6. Contact Us
MAIN/search
MAIN/Solutions
Solutions/
SOLUTIONS
  • Research & Development
  • Real World Evidence
  • Commercialization
  • Safety & Regulatory Compliance
  • Technologies
LIFE SCIENCE SEGMENTS
HEALTHCARE SEGMENTS
THERAPEUTIC AREAS

Impacting People's Lives

"We strive to help improve outcomes and create a healthier, more sustainable world for people everywhere.

LEARN MORE
Harness the power to transform clinical development

Reimagine clinical development by intelligently connecting data, technology, and analytics to optimize your trials. The result? Faster decision making and reduced risk so you can deliver life-changing therapies faster.

Research & Development Overview
Research & Development Quick Links
Real World Evidence. Real Confidence. Real Results.

Generate and disseminate evidence that answers crucial clinical, regulatory and commercial questions, enabling you to drive smarter decisions and meet your stakeholder needs with confidence.

REAL WORLD EVIDENCE OVERVIEW
Real World Evidence Quick Links
See markets more clearly. Opportunities more often.

Elevate commercial models with precision and speed using AI-driven analytics and technology that illuminate hidden insights in data.

COMMERCIALIZATION OVERVIEW
Commercialization Quick Links
Service driven. Tech-enabled. Integrated compliance.

Orchestrate your success across the complete compliance lifecycle with best-in-class services and solutions for safety, regulatory, quality and medical information.

COMPLIANCE OVERVIEW
Safety & Regulatory Compliance Quick Links
Intelligence that transforms life sciences end-to-end.

When your destination is a healthier world, making intelligent connections between data, technology, and services is your roadmap.

TECHNOLOGIES OVERVIEW
Technology Quick Links
MAIN/Products
Products/
CLINICAL PRODUCTS
COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS
COMPLIANCE, SAFETY, REG PRODUCTS
REAL WORLD PRODUCTS

CASE STUDY

"Data in a Day

LEARN MORE
MAIN/Insights
Insights/
BLOGS, WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES

Explore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.

DISCOVER INSIGHTS
THE IQVIA INSTITUTE

An in-depth exploration of the global healthcare ecosystem with timely research, insightful analysis, and scientific expertise.

SEE LATEST REPORTS

INSTITUTE REPORT

"Global Trends in R&D 2024

READ MORE

EMEA Insights

"IQVIA thought leadership with a focus on EMEA.

Learn more

WHITE PAPER

"DCTs Deliver Big ROI

LEARN MORE

WHITE PAPER

"Capturing value at scale: The $4 billion RWE imperative

LEARN MORE
MAIN/About
About/
FEATURED INNOVATIONS
  • IQVIA Connected Intelligence™
  • IQVIA Healthcare-grade AI™
  • Human Data Science Cloud
  • IQVIA Innovation Hub
  • Decentralized Trials
  • Patient Experience powered by Apple
WHO WE ARE
NEWS & RESOURCES

INVESTOR RELATIONS

"Visit our investor relations site for more information.

LEARN MORE
Unlock your potential to drive healthcare forward

By making intelligent connections between your needs, our capabilities, and the healthcare ecosystem, we can help you be more agile, accelerate results, and improve patient outcomes.

LEARN MORE
IQVIA AI is Healthcare-grade AI

Building on a rich history of developing AI for healthcare, IQVIA AI connects the right data, technology, and expertise to address the unique needs of healthcare. It's what we call Healthcare-grade AI.

LEARN MORE
Your healthcare data deserves more than just a cloud.

The IQVIA Human Data Science Cloud is our unique capability designed to enable healthcare-grade analytics, tools, and data management solutions to deliver fit-for-purpose global data at scale.

LEARN MORE
Innovations make an impact when bold ideas meet powerful partnerships

The IQVIA Innovation Hub connects start-ups with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners. Together, we can help lead the future of healthcare with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners.

LEARN MORE
Proven, faster DCT solutions

IQVIA Decentralized Trials deliver purpose-built clinical services and technologies that engage the right patients wherever they are. Our hybrid and fully virtual solutions have been used more than any others.

LEARN MORE
IQVIA Patient Experience Solutions powered by Apple

Empowering patients to personalize their healthcare and connecting them to caregivers has the potential to change the care delivery paradigm. IQVIA and Apple are collaborating to bring this exciting future of personalized care directly to devices patients already have and use.

LEARN MORE
MAIN/Careers
Careers/
WORKING AT IQVIA

Our mission is to accelerate innovation for a healthier world. Together, we can solve customer challenges and improve patient lives.

LEARN MORE
LIFE AT IQVIA

Careers, culture and everything in between. Find out what’s going on right here, right now.

LEARN MORE

WE’RE HIRING

"Improving human health requires brave thinkers who are willing to explore new ideas and build on successes. Unleash your potential with us.

SEARCH JOBS
MAIN/Contact Us
Contact Us/
Blog
Introducing the Human Data Scientist
Oct 23, 2018
  • Blogs
  • Introducing the Human Data Scientist

At IQVIA, we describe what we do not just as data science, but as human data science. Why make the distinction? Is there more to it than semantics?  How different is human data science from what every other sector relies on to make business decisions?

To help answer such questions, we’re launching a series of articles describing “A Day in the Life of a Human Data Scientist” featuring the work and perspectives of experts and analytical gurus from across IQVIA who practice different aspects of human data science.

But first, an introduction to the discipline and its disciples.

Human data science in a nutshell

Human data science is an emerging discipline that integrates the study of human science with breakthroughs in data science and technology. The goal is to advance our understanding of human health through better, more insightful decisions.  To understand what is working, what isn’t, and why. We foresee the potential for human data science to deliver more relevancy and precision to decision makers – exactly what is called for as human science grows more precise and personalized.

With changes in the life sciences industry and the market environment, a higher level of analytics is required to succeed. Just 15 years ago, manufacturers simply needed to gain a basic understanding of the market in order to benchmark their performance and create and follow their business plans. Today, however, such a cookie-cutter approach to research and planning won’t cut it. Companies need to know more than basic market and drug trends; they need to know about undertreated markets, how to deal with price sensitivity, payer relationships, patient awareness vs. payer resistance, and the list goes on.

Not your average data scientist

Human data scientists are not exactly the unicorns of the research world, but they are a fairly rare breed. For starters, they must know about healthcare – not just broadly, but in minute detail. And it’s this special knowledge, coupled with access to advanced analytics and transformative technologies, that separates them from garden-variety data scientists.

The fact is, healthcare data is messy. It’s often unstructured. Gaining access to it is challenging. And patient privacy must be protected without fail. Furthermore, it’s only part of the picture. To solve questions about human health, we increasingly need to look outside of healthcare. All of this requires a deep knowledge of the subject area and the ability to think differently about how data needs to be collected, studied, combined, and most importantly protected.

Admittedly, general data scientists can process and digest 80 percent of low-end healthcare data without having any particular domain expertise. But when asking and answering questions about human health, they’re going to struggle with that last 20 percent, which can make all the difference in the final analysis.

Take, for example, a basic query:  What is Humira®’s market share? A human data scientist knows that the question is far from simple, and that the answer depends on knowing what to count – all TNF drugs? Only those for rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis? Or perhaps one of the other ten indications it is approved for. In other words, human data science demands that you ask better questions, steeped in domain expertise.

Human data scientists also often have to make choices intuitively and be quite nuanced in their work. For instance, a general data scientist will choose from a toolkit of regression analysis, p-test, or other statistical analysis for the data at hand. But the choice may be based on preference, rather than intuitively knowing what methodology works for what question. The domain expertise of human data scientists allows them to be more creative in their approaches and prevents them from using old tools to answer new questions.

Rules of the road

Human data scientists approach their work with an understanding that:

  1. There is elegance and efficiency in simplicity.  A human data scientist knows how to perform complicated analyses when they add value, but will take the simple route if possible.
  2. An ongoing goal is to work with data in a smarter way – to accomplish more in less time.
  3. Getting answers is a team effort. No one person can do it alone as the process requires experts in a number of disciplines encompassing everything from programming to IT infrastructure to statistics.
  4. There’s creativity here! – Both in the questions asked and the tools used to find the answers. The human data scientist must reimagine how decision makers get to the right decision and must be capable of pulling together data from different sources in a new way.
  5. Ultimately, this business is about humans and raising the bar on what is considered healthy by finding ways to prevent disease and reverse it.

Watch for subsequent articles as we explore these themes and the world of the human data scientist in greater detail. 

More on this topic

Blog
Heralding the Era of Human Data Science
By: Marla Kessler
Article
The High IQ Approach of Human Data Science
Contact Us