Amy Abernethy

In February, Roche paid US$1.9 billion to acquire Flatiron Health, a 6-year old health technology company that is working to transform oncology electronic health records into regulatory-grade real-world data. For Flatiron CSO and CMO Amy Abernethy — an oncologist and palliative care specialist by training who popularized the term 'financial toxicity' for expensive cancer drugs — this approach is already starting to streamline drug development and clinical trials in ways that are making waves across the health-care industry. Most notably, Flatiron's data set helped to speed up the reimbursement of Roche's ALK inhibitor alectinib by a year and a half. Abernethy spoke with Asher Mullard about how cleaned up and curated real-world data stand to transform clinical trials, drug regulation, competition in the health-care market and even drug prices.