From Real-World Data to Real-World Opportunity: Seeing What Others Can’t

For medical device and drug manufacturers, knowing the market is changing is only the beginning.

The more valuable questions are often more specific: Where is a new technology gaining traction? Where is adoption lagging? How is utilization changing over time? What does adoption look like across regions, patient populations and care settings? And what might those patterns mean for product, evidence generation and commercialization strategies?

Real-world data (RWD) can help answer those questions, converting observations from routine clinical care into real-world evidence (RWE) that can inform decisions across the product lifecycle.

“Real-world data and evidence are transforming how life sciences companies develop, discover, commercialize and receive reimbursement for devices and drugs, assess safety and performance, and meet regulatory needs,” said Denise Juliano, Group Vice President of Premier Applied Sciences (PAS).

But extracting meaningful insight requires more than access to data. It takes the right data, at sufficient scale and granularity, combined with researchers who know how to turn the raw information into evidence that addresses specific clinical, economic, business and regulatory questions.

That combination is at the heart of PAS.

Going Deeper with the Premier Healthcare Database

Backed by clinicians, researchers and data scientists, PAS helps life sciences organizations use RWD to investigate product safety and performance, utilization and cost, treatment patterns and other questions across the product lifecycle.

A major differentiator is the Premier Healthcare Database (PHD), a HIPAA-compliant, retrospective database and one of the most comprehensive electronic healthcare databases in the United States. As of July 2026, the PHD contains approximately 25 percent of annual U.S. inpatient admissions and U.S. service-level, all-payer information on approximately 1.5 billion outpatient visits.*

Scale, however, is only part of the story.

For manufacturers, chargemaster data is one of the PHD’s most important features: It provides information on all charged services and products.

That level of detail can be especially powerful for device and drug manufacturers. A procedure code can indicate that a procedure occurred. Chargemaster data goes deeper, helping researchers identify the manufacturer, brand, and device models or supplies associated with that encounter and classify the products used. 

The PHD creates opportunities to investigate questions such as:

• How quickly is a technology being adopted?
• Is a newer technology replacing an established one?
• Does adoption differ by hospital size or teaching status?
• Are utilization patterns different across geographic regions?
• Which healthcare settings appear to be earlier or later adopters?
• How is the cost of care changing as the market evolves?
• Where could additional evidence or provider education be valuable?

In other words, the PHD can help move manufacturers from seeing what happened toward understanding where to invest time and resources next.

“By combining chargemaster data with longitudinal patient and facility information, we can see how adoption evolves over time and where meaningful differences emerge across healthcare settings,” said Zhun Cao, PhD, Assistant Vice President of Applied Research for PAS.

“For life sciences companies navigating increasingly dynamic markets, that level of insight can help identify the right questions to ask and where to focus next.”

Analyzing Adoption Trends and Implications

A recent PAS analysis of catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AFib) demonstrates the approach.

AFib is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia in the United States, affecting an estimated six million to 12 million people and representing a leading cause of stroke, heart failure and cardiovascular hospitalization.

Catheter ablation has become a critical, guideline-recommended rhythm-control strategy for symptomatic AFib, with Class 1 or Class IIa indications in current American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association and Heart Rhythm Society guidelines for paroxysmal and persistent disease. Meanwhile, the technologies used to perform these procedures have evolved substantially.

The PAS study, “Catheter Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation: Device Category Utilization and Cost Trends,” examined catheter ablation encounters among adult AFib patients in U.S. hospitals that are part of the PHD from January 2016 through December 2025.

Researchers classified procedures according to device category including pulsed field ablation (PFA), radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and cryoablation (CRA).

Notably, ablation catheters or their accessories appear as individual line items in the chargemaster data contained in the PHD. That allowed the researchers to perform device-level classification independent of procedure codes.

The study also connected device utilization information with patient-level characteristics such as age group, sex, race/ethnicity, primary payer and AFib subtype, as well as hospital characteristics such as region, urban or rural location, teaching status and bed size. PAS supplemented the core analysis with externally linked Social Vulnerability Index data.

The result yielded a multidimensional view of a rapidly changing device market.

“The catheter ablation study demonstrates the value of looking beyond procedure codes to understand how medical technology is actually being used in clinical practice,” said Cao.

A Decade of Change, Visible in the Data

Across the 10-year study period, the analysis identified 278,560 ablation encounters for patients with AFib.

Procedure volume grew dramatically, from fewer than 2,000 encounters per quarter in 2016 to more than 17,000 per quarter by late 2025.

The underlying technology mix changed as well.

RFA accounted for the vast majority of identified ablations before the introduction of PFA. Following the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of PFA in 2023, utilization of the technology accelerated sharply in 2024. By 2025, PFA had become the dominant device category in the study population.

At the same time, RFA utilization began declining in early 2024. CRA volumes, which had remained a comparatively small part of the market, decreased after the third quarter of 2023.

For a manufacturer, that longitudinal view can reveal something that a simple market snapshot cannot: the trajectory of a changing technology category.

Data and insights can show not merely which technologies are being used but how their relative position is changing over time — and what to do next.

Adoption Isn’t Happening Everywhere at the Same Rate

The PHD also made it possible to look beneath the national trend and examine where utilization was occurring.

Most ablation procedures in the study took place in larger (400 or more beds), urban and teaching hospitals. More than 95 percent of encounters occurred in urban hospitals, and the majority were performed in facilities with 400 or more beds.

PFA was particularly concentrated in large and teaching hospitals. CRA, although substantially less common overall, represented a larger share in mid-size and rural hospitals.

Geography revealed additional differentiation. The South accounted for the largest share of ablation encounters overall, consistent with the proportional composition of the PHD. PFA was also prominent in the Northeast relative to the other device categories, while CRA showed comparatively greater representation in the Midwest and West than in the Northeast.

These are descriptive findings, and the study was not designed to establish why different hospitals adopted particular technologies. Factors such as institutional availability, clinical decision-making, procedural capacity and provider preference would require further investigation.

But from a manufacturer’s perspective, identifying those patterns is, in itself, valuable because it helps reveal where the next questions should be asked.

For example, if a new technology is highly concentrated among hospitals with at least 400 beds, while adoption is lower among smaller facilities, a manufacturer could investigate what is driving that difference. The answers could point toward opportunities for provider education, additional evidence generation, customer segmentation or other targeted commercial strategies.

With data and insights, rather than treating the market as homogeneous, manufacturers can begin identifying distinct adoption patterns and examining the factors that may influence them.

Connecting Utilization with Economics

The same approach can help manufacturers explore another fundamental question: What happens economically as technology changes?

In the catheter ablation analysis, CPI-adjusted median total costs differed over time and across device categories. PFA-treated encounters showed increasing median total costs after adoption, while RFA and CRA costs declined slightly before 2024 and subsequently increased during 2024 and 2025.

Those results need careful interpretation. Cost can be affected by changing patient severity mix, care settings and patterns of institutional adoption. Early PFA cost estimates may also reflect smaller numbers of valid-cost encounters.

The study, therefore, does not establish that the device category caused the observed cost differences among U.S. hospitals represented in the PHD.

Instead, it illustrates the power of differentiated data and insights to identify economic patterns worthy of deeper investigation.

A subsequent analysis, for example, could evaluate adjusted cost differences alongside outcomes, readmission and complications, length of stay and hospital adoption patterns. Such analyses could provide a richer picture of the clinical and economic implications associated with changing utilization.

That distinction is important. RWE is not just about producing a number. It is about asking the next best question the data can address.

From a Research Question to a Commercial Question

The catheter ablation example illustrates a broader capability that is applicable well beyond cardiovascular devices.

Imagine a manufacturer launching a new device or drug. It may need to understand not simply its overall utilization, but:

• Where adoption is happening. PAS can examine utilization by geography, hospital characteristics, patient population and other dimensions, helping reveal differences hidden within aggregate market estimates.
• How quickly adoption is changing. Longitudinal data can show how utilization evolves and whether an emerging technology appears to be gaining share relative to alternatives.
• Who is adopting the technology. Hospital size, teaching status, urban or rural classification and other characteristics can help paint a more detailed picture of the facilities using a device or drug.
• Which patients are receiving the product. Encounter-level demographics, payer information and clinical data enable manufacturers to investigate how utilization varies among patient populations.
• A clear picture of current and potential future economics. Resource utilization and cost of care information can contribute to analyses of the economics associated with different products, technologies and care patterns.

Together, those insights can inform research priorities, evidence-generation strategies, product development, market segmentation, regulatory approach, targeted marketing strategies and more.

The Difference: Data Plus Expertise

Today, healthcare organizations generate enormous quantities of data. The challenge is twofold: identifying the most valuable data ... and turning that data into evidence that can support a decision.

The breadth of the PHD provides visibility across a large and diverse collection of healthcare encounters, while its depth provides detailed information about what happened during those encounters.

Chargemaster data adds a critical layer, particularly for manufacturers seeking to understand product and device utilization at a level that may not be visible through procedure codes alone.

PAS brings the research expertise needed to connect complex healthcare data to meaningful clinical, regulatory and commercial questions. That expertise, coupled with the PHD, contributed to Premier becoming the first partner selected for the National Evaluation System for health Technology (NEST) Marketplace request-for-participation (RFP) process to support the advancement of RWD and RWE in medical device evaluation.

In particular, the value of the PHD lies not only in the data itself, but in the ability to design fit-for-purpose studies that align the data, methods and approach to a specific research objective.

For example, applied research studies can leverage RWD and advanced analytics to identify market trends, explore patient needs and utilization, evaluate product performance and investigate economic implications. RWE can inform product development and differentiation, support market segmentation, contribute to total-cost-of-care assessments, and build evidence that may support regulatory submissions, where appropriate and consistent with applicable regulatory requirements.

For manufacturers operating in fast-moving markets, that combination can make the difference between recognizing a change after it has happened and developing a more nuanced understanding of the market as it evolves.

The catheter ablation study is one example. The larger opportunity is applying the same depth of evidence to the questions that matter for your technology, your customers and your market.

Ready to unlock critical insights and move your business forward? Contact Premier Applied Sciences to discover how real-world data and evidence can help inform your product strategy and deliver better patient care.

*As of July 2026. Information in the PHD, a retrospective database, is de-identified and HIPAA-compliant in accordance with the HIPAA Privacy Rule. More than 1,400 Premier member sites contribute data to the PHD.