IQVIA is a leading global provider of clinical research services, commercial insights and healthcare intelligence to the life sciences and healthcare industries and is dedicated to delivering actionable insights and accelerating innovations. IQVIA brings its global leadership in health data science, synthetic data, real-world evidence, and ethics management to accelerate the responsible use of AI in European healthcare.  As a founding industry partner and beneficiary, IQVIA is shaping both the technical and ethical pillars of Synthetic hEalthcare dAta goveRnanCe Hub (SEARCH). The company’s expertise in data curation, harmonisation, privacy-preserving analytics, and ethics guidance is central to the project’s mission: enabling secure, federated access to high-quality synthetic health data for research, clinical innovation, and public health.

Building the Federated Data Platform

IQVIA supports the federated data infrastructure that underpins SEARCH. By contributing a large-scale, curated synthetic dataset, which links synthetic claims data with genomic information, IQVIA ensures that the platform is both robust and representative of real-world healthcare complexity. Their work enables the integration of diverse data types, from clinical records to genomics, all in compliance with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.

Advancing synthetic data generation and validation

A core ambition of SEARCH is to make synthetic data a trusted, scalable alternative to patient data for AI development and validation. IQVIA’s team outside of SEARCH are involved in developing and benchmarking synthetic data generation methodologies, particularly for structured clinical and genomic data. Their datasets are used to train, validate, and test Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning (AI/ML) models, supporting the creation of privacy-preserving, high-utility synthetic data for a wide range of healthcare applications.

Embedding ethics into SEARCH

IQVIA also leads the development of the Ethics Management Framework for SEARCH, ensuring compliance with evolving ethical and data protection standards across geographies. Their Ethics Guidance Services team coordinates with local sites to map regulatory requirements, support ethics submissions, and maintain an audit-ready repository of approvals. IQVIA’s approach aligns with international standards such as the EU AI Act, ISO/IEC guidelines, and the Declaration of Helsinki, embedding ethics-by-design principles into AI tools and federated network operations.

Driving industry collaboration and adoption

Beyond technology and ethics, IQVIA is a catalyst for industry-academia collaboration, leading the development of training materials, outreach programmes, and engagement strategies. By leveraging its extensive networks, IQVIA helps identify early adopters, inform them of SEARCH’s outputs, and foster a vibrant ecosystem around synthetic data, federated analytics, and ethical AI.

Through its leadership in data science, ethics, and open innovation, IQVIA is helping unlock the full potential of synthetic data and AI for the future of European healthcare.