The problem with Zombie Data—And the critical need for Verified Data
In life sciences, where real-world data (RWD) fuels research, market access, and commercial decision-making, trust in data is everything. Yet, the growing presence of Zombie Data—datasets riddled with unknown provenance, fragmented patient identities, and synthetic data creep—threatens the integrity of insights and degrades the accuracy of AI-driven models.
If Zombie Data represents the industry’s greatest challenge, Verified Data is the optimal solution.
The HealthVerity Verified Data framework ensures that life sciences organizations operate with transparent, accurate, and auditable real-world evidence. By eliminating the risks posed by Zombie Data, Verified Data provides a foundation of truth that drives clinical, commercial, and research excellence.
What is Verified Data?
Verified Data isn’t a feature—it’s the gold standard for actionable real-world evidence:
Source-traceable: Every dataset has clear provenance and auditability.
Accurately curated: Ensures that fragmented patient identities and redundant records are resolved.
Free from synthetic creep: Provides confidence that insights are based on real-world events, not fabricated or imputed records.
Research-ready: Data is structured and optimized for immediate use in RWE, HEOR, clinical trials, and commercial strategies.
The cost of unverified data
When Zombie Data infiltrates life sciences datasets, the consequences are severe:
Data Provenance Issues: Many data resellers cannot trace the origins of their datasets, leaving researchers uncertain about its credibility
Fragmented De-ID Tokens: Legacy de-identification technologies create multiple tokens for the same patient due to minor variations in demographic information, incomplete to inconsistent patient journeys
Synthetic Data Creep: Without clear disclosures, artificial records and imputed data distort real-world insights and degrade AI model performance
For life sciences organizations, these risks translate into higher operational costs, flawed patient insights, and unreliable regulatory submissions. Simply put: decisions made on compromised data can derail research and commercial strategies.
How Verified Data solves the problem
HealthVerity’s Verified Data framework addresses the core weaknesses of Zombie Data, ensuring that organizations work with the most accurate, transparent, and reliable real-world evidence available.
1. Verified Data ensures source transparency
Data provenance is not a nice-to-have—it’s a necessity. With increasing FDA scrutiny on data lineage, organizations need to ensure that every dataset they use is fully traceable. HealthVerity’s Verified Data eliminates uncertainty by providing clear, auditable sourcing for every dataset.
Unlike aggregator models that obscure data origins, Verified Data ensures:
- Regulatory-grade transparency that meets FDA auditability requirements
- Verifiable data sources that researchers can validate for compliance and credibility
- Elimination of blind datasets where the origin of medical claims or lab results is unknown
2. Verified Data resolves identity fragmentation
Traditional deterministic patient-matching methods are a primary cause of Zombie Data, creating redundant patient records and making it nearly impossible to track longitudinal patient journeys. HealthVerity’s probabilistic identity resolution eliminates this issue by offering a 10x improvement in patient-matching accuracy.
With Verified Data:
One patient means one identity: The HealthVerity ID (HVID) matching technology ensures that each patient is generally resolved to a single, accurate identity across datasets.
Patient counts are reliable: Minimizes the risk of overestimating patient populations by overcounting fragmented variations of the same patients.
Seamless longitudinal tracking: Verified Data enables a continuous patient journey, essential for RWE, clinical trials, and commercial analytics.
3. Verified Data blocks synthetic data creep
Synthetic data creep occurs when fabricated or imputed records are mixed into licensed datasets, creating an illusion of completeness at the cost of accuracy. AI and ML models trained on impure datasets suffer from model collapse, reducing their predictive power over time.
Verified Data ensures that:
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All patient records are real-world events, not imputed fabrications.
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Synthetic-free datasets provide reliable insights for commercial and research applications.
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AI models remain accurate by training only on real patient interactions, preserving model integrity and predictive accuracy.
Why Verified Data is essential for Life Sciences
Without Verified Data, life sciences companies risk making flawed assumptions that impact:
Clinical Trials: Poor patient matching and incomplete datasets lead to recruitment failures and inaccurate study results.
HEOR & Market Access: Inconsistent data quality distorts cost-effectiveness analyses and value-based care models.
Commercial Strategy: Inflated provider counts and incorrect patient segmentation lead to wasted marketing spend and missed engagement opportunities.
Verified Data is the only way to ensure that every insight—whether for regulatory submissions, RWE studies, or commercial campaigns—is based on pure, reliable, and research-ready datasets.
Get Verified—research with certainty
As the industry reckons with the threat of Zombie Data, the choice is clear: continue operating with unverified, error-prone datasets, or embrace Verified Data to ensure every insight is based on truth.
With HealthVerity Verified Data, you gain:
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Regulatory-grade provenance to support confident decision-making
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Advanced patient matching to ensure accurate longitudinal insights
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Pure clinical data—free from synthetic creep and redundant records
Don’t let Zombie Data compromise your healthcare research or commercial strategies.
