KI & MSD in patient-centred research partnership
In November 2016, Karolinska Institutet entered a five-year strategic research collaboration with pharmaceutical company MSD, a subsidiary of Merck and Co. Inc. The aim of the venture is to use patient-centered research and real-world data to produce meaningful evidence that enables better healthcare decisions, improves patient outcomes, and drives greater value in healthcare delivery.
About the partnership
In 2021, the contract was prolonged with additionally five years to extend and develop further the partnership with the purpose of jointly identifying and performing research in the areas of real-world evidence and outcomes.
A joint steering group, comprising representatives from both KI and MSD, advises which research projects are to be included. The agreement sets the framework for a close collaboration in which researchers from both parties work together without imposing any limits on the scope of the research in advance.
The Parties envision the strategic alliance to encompass two broad activity arms:
Registry-based research
Use robust real-world data sets for innovative joint research projects across the product development lifecycle.
Karolinska Institutet and MSD to collaborate in joint focus areas of mutual interest to produce robust and relevant real-life data utilizing the Swedish health and disease-specific registries. The Steering group will evaluate and approve the strategy and overall program plan to fund specific studies and projects. For specific disease areas, KI and MSD will together create a good balance between short- and long-term future collaborative studies. Disease Areas of interest include, but are not limited to oncology, vaccines, neuroscience and cardiometabolic diseases. Where relevant, this could include precision medicine focused research to better understand the role of biomarkers and diagnostic tools in the molecular process of the disease and provide opportunities for individualized prevention and treatment of the disease.
Real-world data analytic and methodological research
Focused on advanced real-world data analytics, predictive modeling and development of new methodology.
Karolinska and MSD will work towards exploring novel methods e.g. modeling, predictive modeling, informatics, natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence as well as other advanced analytic methods focused on generating insights and scientific evidence from real-world data. This work will be incorporated into specific projects to be able to understand the impact and utilization of the methods developed.
Vaccine
Neuroscience
Cardio-metabolic
