Now, analytics for pharmacos on top of the Open Payments database

It hasn’t taken long for IT companies serving the pharma industry to make use of the publicly available data on aggregate spending on physicians, an outcome of the Physicians Sunshine Act. One of the first out the gate is Streebo (Houston), a boutique business-analytics and software developer that counts a number of pharma companies (Eisai, Otsuka, Sunovion) among its customer base. Streebo has launched OpenPaymentsAnalytics.com, and is offering free access to qualified pharma employees to peruse the data published on the latter half of 2013 in the CMS Open Payments database, which initially became available last September. Mohammed Ovais, managing partner, says that the 2014 compilation “will become available as soon as possible” after the data’s expected June 30 publication by CMS.

The Sunshine Act mandated pharma’s reporting of spending and other “transfers of value” to physicians, teaching hospitals, and cross-ownership between physicians and medical services companies, with data updated annually. While publicly available, the CMS database is not readily usable for business applications; that’s where Streebo comes in with a portal that organizes the data by physician, specialty, originating payer, geography and time. A “competitor analysis” allows users to match their company’s activity against two others. Streebo offers customized analytics solutions on top of the data (such as combining it with prescription sales) to clients—providing a useful snapshot of marketing, such as insights into where spending has been most impactful in prescriptions. Ovais says that going forward, the company might structure the portal to offer premium services to subscribers, depending on user demand and client feedback.