What is the Rx Equity Observatory?

The Rx Equity Observatory takes a “life course of new drugs” approach to the surveillance strategy.

It involves taking a cradle-to-grave approach by tracing questions of equity throughout all life stages of new drugs and by observing the interaction of upstream (e.g., the innovation problem) and downstream (e.g., the diffusion problem) factors which may contribute to shaping health equity outcomes (Figure 1). This may include data tracking drugs’ discovery as new therapeutic compounds, clinical testing, regulatory review, product launch, patent expiration, generic entry, and discontinuation.

Accordingly, the observatory’s data assets (and/or access) will be built to eventually cover policy-relevant data across the entire life course of new drugs to facilitate surveillance of both up- and down-stream factors that may skew the Rx innovation and diffusion system towards the health needs of privileged populations over others. This will eventually require building a new data platform to link data across the pharmaceutical market’s inflows (e.g., clinical trial data, regulatory data), outflows (e.g., product withdrawals), and the relationship of these to utilization data (e.g., prescription and insurance claims).