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Partner with Our Epidemiology Consultants

Advance public health and safety with our trusted experts and data.

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Scientific expertise

Optum Epidemiology is at the forefront of epidemiologic methodology and practice.

Driven by research objectives, researchers bring scientific rigor and integrity to protocol design, data analytics and research reporting. Such expertise elevates understanding of the safety and efficacy of drugs, devices, biologics and health care delivery.

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Meet our world-class research team

Optum Epidemiology’s multi-disciplinary team includes epidemiologists and research analysts who are supported by experienced project managers and research associates.

Meet our experts

Optum Epidemiology offers safety-related research, consulting and surveillance

   

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Clinical and pharmacoepidemiology research

  • Natural history of disease
  • General epidemiological characterizations
  • Patient profiles, treatment and utilization patterns, outcomes
  • Measures of exposures and effects over time
  • Explanation of clinical course of rare diseases
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Safety profile and effectiveness evaluations

  • Post-approval safety studies/safety surveillance
  • Intervention assessment
  • Comparative effectiveness assessment
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Risk assessment

  • Product risk assessment and analysis
  • Evaluation of risk management plans/risk evaluation and mitigation strategies
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Evaluating the safety of COVID-19 vaccines

In this episode of the UnitedHealth Group “Weekly Dose” podcast, Dr. John Seeger discusses the role of Optum scientific consulting in helping the FDA to evaluate the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

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Data assets and products

Our team has deep experience creating evidence from observational data sources. These resources include insurance claims, electronic and paper medical records, patient and provider surveys, and death registries.

With direct access to the data, we have insight into the most appropriate epidemiologic methodologies and interpretation of results.

Our researchers are adept at creating novel linkages that transcend traditional data limitations and enable a broad view of patient care and health.

Unparalleled data assets

  

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Medical claims data (commercial claims, Medicare)

  • Captures medical and pharmacy encounters, linkable to lab results, death registries and socioeconomic data.
  • Medical record abstraction to confirm diagnoses, drug exposures and other claims information. Used to obtain covariates, and develop and validate algorithms.
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Electronic health record (EHR) data

  • Structured clinical data
  • Enhanced by natural language processing (NLP) of free text electronic clinical notes
  • Validation of key terms to identify conditions, diagnoses and exposures that are difficult to capture through traditional data source mining 
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Novel data linkages

  • Patient populations captured within both the claims and EHR data assets
  • Additional data sources (for example, patient and provider surveys, registries)
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Related resources

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Optum Dynamic Assessment of Pregnancies and Infants

Drive informed decisions about maternal and infant health.

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Informing the FDA BEST Initiative

As a key FDA collaborator, Optum Epidemiology generates reproducible results that inform regulatory decisions for COVID-19 vaccines.
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Monitoring COVID-19 vaccine safety

Discover insights from Dr. John Seeger’s recent participation at the Duke-Margolis Thirteenth Annual Sentinel Initiative Public Workshop.
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