For decades, long-term care and post-acute care settings have remained largely invisible in drug development, clinical research, and real-world data analysis. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies have historically focused on hospital and outpatient data while overlooking a patient population that accounts for some of the highest levels of medication use and medical complexity. PointClickCare Life Sciences is changing that. Leveraging the largest longitudinal data set of electronic health record (EHR) data from skilled nursing and senior living facilities across North America, the company is bringing new levels of insight to drug development, clinical research, and commercialization efforts. In this Q&A, Jeff Wessinger, Vice President and General Manager of PointClickCare Life Sciences, discusses the origins of the business, the unique nature of the data set, and the ways it is already shaping drug development across therapeutic areas such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and tardive dyskinesia.
David Alvaro (DA): PointClickCare is already a well-established name in healthcare technology. How does the Life Sciences business connect to the broader PointClickCare ecosystem?
Jeff Wessinger (JW): PointClickCare has been the leading technology provider for long-term and post-acute care for over two decades. The company is deeply embedded in the day-to-day operations of skilled nursing facilities, senior living communities, and other post-acute care settings. Through these partnerships, we’ve built an incredibly rich data set that captures clinical, operational, and patient outcome data at a scale that no one else has. But until now, those data were primarily used to support the providers within our network — helping them improve care coordination, manage compliance, and optimize patient outcomes within their own facilities.
What we realized is that these same data are also invaluable to life sciences companies. They offer insights into disease progression, treatment effectiveness, and prescribing patterns that can inform everything from early-stage research to commercialization strategies. So, while the core PointClickCare business focuses on enabling better care within long-term and post-acute settings, the Life Sciences business extends that impact outward — leveraging the same high-quality data to drive advancements in drug development, clinical trial design, and post-market surveillance.
DA: What was the driving force behind launching PointClickCare Life Sciences as a distinct business unit?
JW: PointClickCare realized that their 20 years of healthcare data held valuable insights that no other company had. It was clear from the beginning that this data set represented something entirely new. After I had stepped away from my career and was making plans to retire, they reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in taking a look at something — 20 years of healthcare data that no one else had. It was clear from the beginning that this data set represented something entirely new. We started asking ourselves: What if we could make this data available to life sciences companies? What if we could help solve some of the biggest challenges in drug development? The drive to answer those questions and overcome the challenges in realizing that vision made the decision for me.
Since then, we’ve built out a dedicated team of over 40 people focused entirely on making this data set available, research-ready, and impactful for pharmaceutical, biotech, and healthcare decision-makers. Our goal is to ensure that this data doesn’t just sit in a vault — it needs to be used to improve patient care, accelerate drug discovery, and drive better outcomes in long-term care.
DA: What makes your data so unique compared to other real-world data sets?
JW: This is really the only data set of its kind. If we don’t make this available, it doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Long-term care and post-acute care facilities have been completely left out of most real-world data analyses. The healthcare industry has no shortage of hospital and primary care data, but nobody tracks what happens in skilled nursing facilities, assisted living centers, or senior care settings at this scale. Yet, this is where some of the most medically complex, high-risk patients live.
What makes this even more urgent is that this population is growing. The number of people in long-term care is expected to double over the next 20 years. If we don’t start understanding how diseases progress in this population, how medications work in real-world settings, and what interventions actually make a difference, we’re going to have a massive healthcare crisis on our hands. Our data fill that gap. We capture information on patient outcomes, medication use, disease progression, and care patterns that simply aren’t available anywhere else, and those data can be used in so many ways.
DA: What types of insights can these data provide?
JW: There are two major ways our data is making an impact. The first is expanding access to newer therapies. Right now, the standard of care in long-term care is far behind where it should be. We see it across the board. Even though new therapies for Alzheimer’s, diabetes, epilepsy, and other chronic diseases are available, they’re not reaching these patients nearly fast enough. Our data help track prescription trends, treatment adherence, and real-world clinical outcomes, giving life sciences companies the information they need to bridge this care gap.
The second is supporting the development of new therapies. Our longitudinal patient journey data allow researchers to track disease progression over time, segment patient populations more effectively, and identify opportunities for new treatments. If we can help a company develop even one new therapy for Alzheimer’s or dementia, that’s a massive win for this population.
DA: Can you give an example of a real-world impact from your data?
JW: One of the best examples we’ve seen so far is in the market for treatments for tardive dyskinesia (TD), a serious side effect of high-dose antipsychotic medications. Without naming specific brands, several pharmaceutical companies have developed leading-edge therapies for TD. Our data played a crucial role in helping these companies identify opportunities to improve the standard of care — ensuring that targeted medications were used to treat and reduce TD symptoms in these patients.
By leveraging our real-world data, these companies were able to refine their treatment strategies, optimize prescribing practices, and ultimately expand access to more effective therapies. This not only helped them grow their market share but also led to measurable improvements in patient care, demonstrating the power of data-driven decision-making in transforming clinical outcomes.
DA: How can life sciences companies access PointClickCare Life Sciences data? What does a typical partnership look like?
JW: We work with life sciences companies in a few different ways, depending on their needs and where they are in the drug development or commercialization process. Some companies come to us with highly specific research questions, and we collaborate on custom data studies that extract relevant insights from our dataset. Others seek longer-term partnerships, gaining access to continuous real-world data feeds that support multiple studies over time.
One of the things we’re working toward is shifting the industry away from one-off data purchases and toward ongoing data subscriptions. Continuous access to real-world patient data enables more proactive decision-making—whether tracking a drug’s post-launch performance, identifying new patient populations, or refining clinical development strategies. Additionally, our data can be combined with other real-world data sets to create a more comprehensive repository, offering an even deeper understanding of disease progression, treatment patterns, and patient outcomes.
DA: What types of companies does PointClickCare Life Sciences typically work with?
JW: We primarily work with pharmaceutical and biotech companies, but the applications of our data go beyond just drug developers. Regulatory agencies, health policy groups, and even payers are starting to recognize the value of real-world data in long-term care.
On the clinical development side, we work with big pharma and smaller biotechs that are trying to understand how diseases progress in older, medically complex populations. A lot of these companies are working in areas like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease — all conditions that disproportionately affect seniors but haven’t been studied in this setting at scale.
On the commercial side, we work with market access and HEOR (Health Economics and Outcomes Research) teams that need to track how branded drugs are performing in real-world settings. Companies developing new formulations of existing therapies also benefit from our data, especially if they’re looking to demonstrate a differentiated benefit in the long-term care population.
DA: Has PointClickCare Life Sciences conducted any original research using its own data?
JW: Yes, and this is an area we’re continuing to expand. Because we sit on such a rich data set covering millions of patient records, we’re in a unique position to proactively investigate important clinical and market trends. Some of the work we’ve done has involved understanding disease prevalence in long-term care, tracking medication adherence patterns, and identifying gaps in treatment access.
One example is our work in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia care. We’ve been able to track early warning signs of cognitive decline in ways that traditional clinical trials haven’t been able to, simply because we have so much longitudinal data. Another example is our research into diabetes in long-term care — we’ve shown that the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in long-term care settings is far higher than what most pharma companies have assumed, which has big implications for treatment planning and market strategy.
DA: What’s one thing you wish more people understood about real-world data in long-term care?
JW: I think the biggest thing is that long-term care data isn’t just a niche data set — it’s a missing piece of the drug development puzzle. Historically, long-term care patients have been left out of clinical trials, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need effective treatments. The reality is that this is one of the fastest-growing patient populations in the world, and if we don’t start studying them properly, we’re going to see widening gaps in care.
Pharma companies are starting to wake up to this, but there’s still a lot of education that needs to happen. Real-world data isn’t just about proving a drug works — it’s about understanding how it works in diverse patient populations, uncovering new opportunities for intervention, and ultimately driving better outcomes.
DA: What are some of the challenges in getting pharma companies to adopt these data?
JW: One of the biggest challenges is getting companies to move beyond episodic data purchases and commit to subscriptions. Pharma companies are used to buying data to answer very specific questions — one study at a time. What we’re trying to do is show them that having ongoing access to these data will allow them to continuously derive value across multiple studies.
On the commercial side, it’s easier. Companies want to track market dynamics and patient adoption trends regularly, so a subscription makes sense. But on the clinical side, we still need to prove that having constant access to our data set will provide sustained value beyond individual projects. Every time we complete another study with a major player, we move closer to proving that case.
DA: What’s next for PointClickCare Life Sciences?
JW: We’re still just getting started. We’re working with more pharma and biotech companies than ever to bring long-term care data into the drug development pipeline. Our goal is to help answer big questions—how can we detect Alzheimer’s earlier? How can we ensure that new therapies reach the patients who need them most? The industry is waking up to the fact that long-term care matters, and we’re here to make sure they have the data they need to take action.