DAC is the Data Analytics Centre of the Danish Medicines Agency located in Copenhagen, Denmark. DAC will enable the Danish Medicines Agency to offer new types of scientific advice to the pharmaceutical companies on the development of new medicines, including medicines for people with rare diseases and small patient groups.
About DAC
DAC is the Data Analytics Centre of the Danish Medicines Agency located in Copenhagen, Denmark.
DAC works to transform information and data on medicine and medicine devices into knowledge that can benefit the citizens.
DAC enables the Danish Medicines Agency to offer new types of scientific advice to the pharmaceutical companies on the development of new medicines, including medicines for people with rare diseases. DAC is also developing new methods for optimized real time drug safety surveillance.
DAC employs specialist from a wide range of different professional backgrounds. Experts within pharmaceutical science, data science, public health science, political science and biostatistics are just some of the resources that DAC’s has at its disposal. DAC will also take part in Ph.D. and postdoc projects.
We welcome DAC as a very important partner in the fight for our patients
Our projects and analyses
DAC strives to maintain a very high level of operational transparency. This also entails the highest possible level of transparency in relation to how different analyses are prioritized, which analyses have been conducted and, which are in the current project pipeline. Often times it will not be possible to share upcoming analyses before they have been published.
In order to prioritize which potential analyses from the pipeline to initiate, DAC uses a prioritization matrix to score each analysis on a range of pre-defined variables. The prioritisation matrix can be found here (pdf).
Case: Tramadol use
DAC investigated the effects of regulatory risk minimization measures to reduce the use of analgesics between 2017-18 and identified a decline in the use of Tramadol coinciding in time with the media attention in 2017, which continued during the regulatory risk minimization actions taken. The analysis was done in collaboration with Bispebjerg Hospital and University of Southern Denmark.
Most Danish patients expect that their data are used for improving treatments for future patients
Why we do it
Denmark has one of the most extensive health data registries in the world. The large amount of patient-level data on every aspect from treatment regimens over reported adverse drug reactions to socioeconomic factors constitutes a unique possibility for the use of big data analytics to discover hidden patterns to the benefit of the patients.
Another aspect of the use of data analytics on health data is the potential to create a new paradigm for approval of new medicines. By tracking adverse drug reactions on a large scale in real time, it will be possible for the regulators to approve drugs faster and act on safety signals, if unexpected adverse drug reactions present themselves. It will reduce the entry barriers for new drugs to go to market while maintaining the high safety standards currently in place.
The Danish Heart Foundation welcomes this initiative with focus on better and safer treatment for our patients
National and international collaboration
DAC is collaborating with a diverse set of partners both domestically and internationally. The backbone of DAC is a strategic partnership with the Danish National Genome Centre (NGC) which gives DAC access to NGC’s state-of-the-art High-Performance Computer System. DAC also has close collaboration with the Danish scientific community and is in the process of establishing connections to leading international research institutions. DAC will also create forums for patient advocacy groups as well as industry representatives in order to receive input and inspiration to the conducted analyses.
DAC has established collaborations with other national competence authorities in the EU with the overarching goal of creating a strong European network of regulators within the field of health data analytics and regulatory science.
The new data analytics centre will give us the possibility to following medicine throughout the entire life cycle
Data and ethics
DAC uses a wide range of different data sources. Via the Danish Health Data Authority, The Danish Clinical Quality Program – National Clinical Registries and others, DAC have access to some of the most sophisticated and complete patient-level health data in the world. DAC analysis are run on Danish National Genome Centre supercomputer, which meets the highest requirements for data and IT-security.
DAC will also abide by strict data ethical standards. All analysis conducted by DAC comply with the Danish Medicines Agency's charter on data ethics and transparency (in Danish).