WHISCON – World Health Information Science
Consultants, LLC – conducts research and teaching in epidemiology and
drug safety. The firm has a core staff, a group of academic
consultants who direct studies, and close collaborative ties with firms
that provide health insurance data, hospital information, clinical
trials and the ad hoc collection of observational data for registries
and surveys.
The firm was founded in 2007 by Alexander Walker and Deborah Hennessey,
who each had reached senior levels of research and research
administration before opening WHISCON. Dr. Walker is former Chair of
the Department of Epidemiology of the Harvard School of Public Health
and former Senior Vice President for Epidemiology at Ingenix, Inc., a
subsidiary of United Health Group. Ms. Hennessey was Vice President
for Operations in the Ingenix epidemiology group. Together at
Ingenix, they managed a staff of 40 persons and many scores of studies
in general epidemiology and drug safety.
Administrative Databases and Electronic Health Records
Currently active database studies include research on
• Complications of inpatient treatment with antifungal agents,
conducted with Premier, Inc., an alliance owned by member
not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare organizations, which holds
summary and charge records and for approximately one-sixth of the
hospitalizations that occur annually in the United States.
• Cardiovascular events in statin users, conducted with IMS Health,
using commercial insurance claims data from the IMS subsidiary,
PharMetrics.
• Health care utilization in different classes of convulsive
disorders, using employer insurance claims available through Thomson
Reuters.
Staff has experience additionally in work with the General Practice
Research Database (UK), Saskatchewan Health (Canada), MediPlus
(Germany), Italian Social Security and Ingenix files.
Dr. Walker and Sebastian Schneeweiss, MD, DSc, one of WHISCON’s core
consultants, have served on Brookings Institution committees to advise
on the development of the Sentinel Initiative, the FDA’s mandated
100-million-person drug safety surveillance system. Both have also
served on Institute of Medicine subcommittees on comparative
cost-effectiveness research.
Registries and Large Simple Trials
In January 2009, WHISCON and PPD announced a strategic alliance for
drug safety research. PPD is one of the largest contract research
organizations in North America and brings to the collaboration the
capacity to implement registries and large simple trials. WHISCON
brings expertise in problem conceptualization, design, interpretation
and presentation of the safety findings. The WHISCON-PPD connection
permits work in which the sponsor is looking a full-fledged scientific
enterprise to design, conduct, interpret and defend drug safety
research that involves direct contact with patients and providers.
Publications
Scientific investigation is complete only when the results are open to
the scrutiny of the research community. WHISCON’s own scientific
publications and the hundreds of prior publications of its principals
and consults attest to the firm’s standing and rigor.
Education
WHISCON offers on-site short courses in pharmacoepidemiology and
related research methods. We work directly with clients to design and
implement courses that respond to staff needs.
Clients 2008-2009
Astellas, Eisai, IMS Health, Harvard Medical School, Merck, Novartis,
OMOP, Ortho-McNeil Janssen, Pfizer, US Department of Justice
