Datavant Life Sciences’ annual RWD Connect industry event brings together leaders from across our 350+ real-world data partners, including many of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies, to share what’s working, emerging use cases, and what’s next in RWD and the real-world evidence industry at large.

The themes that surfaced offer a clear view of where real-world evidence is headed next — and what every team will need to accelerate the path from data to decisions.

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1. The Era of Incremental Progress Is Over

Across conversations with life science leaders and in the opening remarks from Arnaub Chatterjee, President and GM of Life Sciences at Datavant, a long-anticipated shift in mindset was evident: we won’t accelerate access to medicines by taking small swings.

Organizations are now focusing on the infrastructures that matter most – data linkage, privacy frameworks, end-to-end evidence generation, and more efficient data discovery and analysis – and doing so in ways that unlock scale rather than one-off solutions.

Teams are recognizing the value of planning for real-world data and evidence needs earlier in the development lifecycle, from feasibility and consent planning to identifying the critical inputs for regulatory submission success.

2. Tokenization Remains the Foundation: “The Gift That Keeps on Giving”

Dr. Sebastian Schneeweiss, Professor of Medicine & Epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and Co-Founder of Aetion, a Datavant Company, succinctly captured what many panelists reinforced: no single dataset is fit for every purpose, and the true power comes from linking complementary sources.

Tokenization, especially when designed into studies from the start, unlocks longitudinal follow-up, richer cohort creation, and the ability to validate or augment clinical trials with secondary data. Dr. Schneeweiss noted that the cost and risk of tokenization are low, while the optionality it creates is enormous.

3. Linked Data Is Delivering Real-World Impact Right Now

Multiple pharmaceutical organizations and RWD partners shared examples of how linked data has already reshaped their clinical, commercial, and scientific strategies. These stories underscored a simple truth: linked data is no longer aspirational; it’s operational.

Common threads included:

• Pairing the depth of EHR data with the breadth and longevity of claims to create more complete patient journeys.
• Using linkage to boost sample sizes, reduce follow-up gaps, or build comparison cohorts that strengthen confidence in findings.
• Establishing clear governance and a “champion” for linkage work, ensuring decisions are made quickly and execution remains smooth.
  

4. Privacy and Utility Must Advance in Parallel

The privacy discussion reflected a sector grappling with new challenges: OMICS data, unstructured text, dynamic de-identification, and the need for transparency as data types proliferate.

Panelists from Flatiron, Optum, and Clarify agreed that protecting patients and enabling innovation are not competing goals; they are co-requirements. They emphasized:

• Privacy must be integrated into workflows, not layered on afterward.
• Not all data should be used for all purposes. “Should I be using this?” is the first and most important question.
• Patient transparency and modern consent models will shape the next era of trust.
  

5. AI Is Reducing Friction and Revealing the “Why” Behind the Data

AI’s role was a major throughline across panels. Whether parsing clinical notes, harmonizing unstructured content, or accelerating feasibility assessments, LLMs are moving from experimentation to everyday utility.

Participants described how:

• Clinical notes hold the “why” behind treatment decisions, and AI is making that accessible at scale.
• Data partners and life sciences companies are now collaborating through clean rooms to reduce barriers in data discoverability — a shift led by the Lighthouse partners who teamed up with us to launch Datavant Connect, powered by AWS Clean Rooms, and on stage highlighted its benefits in real use cases.
• Organizations are re-interrogating questions they asked as little as three years ago, because the data and technology have advanced meaningfully since then.

6. Efficiency Gains Are Real and Already Transforming Research Timelines

The American Cancer Society shared one of the day’s most tangible examples: in partnering with Datavant, its record retrieval times dropped from six months to 1.5 months, thanks to digital record access, easily searchable PDFs, and privacy-preserving tokenized systems.

Those same digital records are now powering early pilots of LLM-based abstraction. Meanwhile, experts from UBC and Novartis emphasized that tokenizing early preserves optionality and creates exponential ROI by making EMRs and source notes linkable throughout the study lifecycle.

7. Modern Trial Design Requires Tokenization by Default

Experts from Bayer, Duke, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Compass Pathways underscored that tokenization should no longer be treated as ancillary. They agreed that it is the mechanism that allows clinical and real-world data to unlock deeper insights, supporting a myriad of use cases that include:

• Regulatory insights
• Market access
• Post-market evidence
• Patient journey understanding
• Fit-for-purpose validation
  

Designing for linkage upfront — through feasibility assessments, consent models, and governance — ensures the right data is available at the right time. In fact, the volume of trials that Datavant is tokenizing has grown nearly 300% since 2022, reaching approximately 280 toward the end of 2025. 

Go deeper on the trends that Datavant recently analyzed across trials we’re tokenizing to uncover how life sciences organizations are adopting data linkage practices today—and where the industry is headed next.

8. Connected Infrastructure Is the New Competitive Advantage

If the day opened with a call to move beyond incrementalism, the throughline across conversations made clear what enables that leap: a connected, interoperable evidence infrastructure. Panelists agreed that progress won’t come from doing the same things slightly better; it will come from connecting the systems, data, and methods that allow us to answer critical research questions, faster.

Across discussions, a clear set of principles surfaced:

• Tokenization unlocks optionality.
• Data linkage underpins richer, more representative evidence strategies.
• Technological advancements in insights generation are already yielding measurable results.
• Privacy frameworks allow innovation without compromising trust.

Together, these elements form the infrastructure required to translate data into decisions at enterprise scale.

As Dr. Nicole Gatto, Chief Scientific Officer at Aetion, a Datavant company, put it: “If you want to be innovative, you will find a way to tokenize all your trials and start linking to RWD. The value will come.”

Want to hear from our 2025 RWD Connect panelists directly? Watch the recordings on-demand.