The evidence arrives after the decision
A study commissioned in March lands in November, by which point the launch plan is set and the budget is committed. Timing is not a nice-to-have in this work, it is most of the value.
About Aurumetrics
Built by someone who kept having to say no to good questions.
Not for scientific reasons, and not for governance reasons. Because the question sat outside the employer's business plan. Every one of those plans was reasonable. But watching answerable questions go unanswered for purely commercial reasons is a good reason to build something structured differently.
The journey
Dr Uru Malik
Two doctorates, one in science and one in business. Sixteen years spent moving between the laboratory, the clinic, the regulator, the agency and the commercial team, which turns out to be an unusual route into real-world data and a useful one.
The short version. I have sat on most sides of this industry: developing drugs, working inside healthcare organisations and agencies, advising life sciences clients across several continents, and building the analytics that answer their questions. Aurumetrics exists because the same problem kept recurring in every one of those seats, and none of them were structured to solve it.
Where it started
Science first, and a doctorate to go with it
A research training in the biological sciences, and the habit that comes with it: state the hypothesis before you look, define the endpoint before you measure it, and report what you found rather than what you hoped for. That discipline is the whole reason a real-world result can be trusted, and it is the thing most often missing when this work is done badly.
Then
Drug development, from the inside
Working on how a compound becomes a medicine: the studies, the endpoints, the regulatory conversations, and the moments where a programme turns on a single evidence question nobody had budgeted for. It taught me what a clinical trial can and cannot establish, which is exactly the knowledge you need to judge when real-world data is the right instrument instead.
Then
A second doctorate, in business
Because the constraint was rarely scientific. Programmes stall on commercial logic, on procurement, on how a decision gets made and by whom, and on whether the evidence arrives before or after the decision. Understanding both sides is what lets a conversation move from "here is an analysis" to "here is the decision this changes".
Then
Health systems, agencies and analytics, across several continents
Time inside healthcare organisations, health agencies and analytics groups in different countries, which is where the real education happens. Every health system pays, codes, records and governs differently. You do not learn that from a database catalogue. You learn it by trying to get an answer out of one, and finding out why you cannot.
Then
Sixteen years alongside life sciences clients
Long enough to know what commercial, medical, access and clinical teams are each actually being asked for, and how differently they use the same number. Long enough to recognise the real pain points: evidence that arrives after the decision, a supplier who cannot say no, a study that dies at approval stage in month four, and a market where nobody can tell you what is even possible.
Now
Aurumetrics
Built so that the answer to a good question is not "that is outside our business plan". We go where the challenge is, because that is the point of the firm.
Why the firm exists
Four pain points we heard often enough to build a company around.
None of these are hypothetical. Each one came up repeatedly, in different companies, in different markets, from people who had no reason to be complaining to me.
Nobody will say no
A supplier paid to run a study has every incentive to find the study runnable. The most useful thing we can tell a client is that the data cannot answer the question, and it costs us money to say it.
Four suppliers, no owner
Data broker, analytics vendor, ethics consultant, translator. The client project-manages the seams and absorbs every delay that falls between them.
Nobody can say what is possible
Ask what evidence a given market can support and you get a catalogue rather than an answer. Knowing what is permitted, not merely what exists, is the expertise.
The team
We work as one team across borders.
A core team in Australia, senior researchers in the markets themselves, and the analytics teams inside each alliance partner, working to one protocol and one set of standards. On any engagement you are buying all three, and the local expert is a named individual rather than a pooled resource.
The core team
Study design and method, governance and permissions, and data engineering. This group owns your engagement end to end and does not change between feasibility and final report.
In-market researchers
Senior people living and working in the markets themselves. Many hold doctorates and post-doctoral research backgrounds, with two decades or more working directly with their own country's health system and its datasets, plus disease and therapy-area depth.
Alliance partner analytics teams
Every partner relationship brings its own credentialed analysts who work inside the controlled-access environment every day. You are not buying a data licence. You are buying working access to the people who already run analysis on that data.
9 marketswith named people who have done the work inside that health system before
15+data-partner contracts negotiated across eight markets
12data types we can design against, from claims through to genomics
3 disciplineson every engagement: local system, clinical or therapy area, and technical method
How we operate
We go where the challenge is.
Three things we hold to, because they are the ones clients tell us are missing elsewhere.
Every client need matters
A twenty-minute question gets a twenty-minute answer, not a proposal. We would rather be useful early and win the larger piece of work later than qualify you out of a conversation because the first question was small.
We operate efficiently, on purpose
No pyramid to feed, no layer of account management between you and the person doing the work, and a data pipeline we run ourselves. That is why senior time is affordable here and why the answer arrives before the decision.
We are the ones who know this data
Real-world data in Asia-Pacific is a specialist field with a small number of people who have actually negotiated access, sat on the governance committee and defended the method. That is the group we built the firm from, and it is what you are hiring.
Track record
The parts a procurement reader will ask about.
- Chaired a data governance committee. Not attended one. Owning the decisions about what was permissible, and being the person who said no.
- Authored research-project approvals. The protocol, the data-handling plan, the justification and the limits. The document an ethics committee actually reads.
- Certified in the ethical conduct of human-subject research.
- Established a data governance steering committee at a prior organisation, rather than leaving handling decisions to whoever was closest to the project.
- Took a prior organisation through ISO 27001 and Five Safes accreditation. That certification belongs to that entity, not to this one, and we will not imply it transfers.
- Embedded country-specific compliance across markets, because a single regional compliance posture does not exist.
- Negotiated more than fifteen data-partner contracts across eight markets, which is where theory meets the actual language of a use-restriction clause.
What we are
- A real-world data consultancy working inside nine Asia-Pacific health systems, with a core team in Australia and senior researchers in-market
- A designer and deliverer of evidence: insight, analysis, studies and dashboards
- The operator of Health Grid Platform, a subscription analytics product built on published Australian health datasets
- A single contracting entity for every market we work in
What we are not
- A data vendor. We do not licence an alliance partner's database
- A holder of identifiable records, anywhere, at any point
- A clinical trial organisation
- A supplier who will produce evidence to a predetermined conclusion
- A firm that names its alliance partners publicly. Named under NDA on request
Questions buyers actually ask
The awkward ones, answered.
How big is the team, really?
Three layers, and you get all three. A core team in Australia covering study design and method, governance and permissions, and data engineering. Senior researchers in the markets themselves, many holding doctorates and post-doctoral backgrounds with two decades or more inside their own health system. And the credentialed analytics teams of the alliance partner in each market, who run analysis on that data every day. On a typical engagement three or more of those people touch the work, and the local expert is a named individual rather than a pooled resource. What you do not get is a pyramid of juniors billed at senior rates.
What happens if a key person is unavailable?
Four written commitments in every engagement: a signed method note before work starts, a cohort specification you approve, reproducibility as a contract term, and a named second reviewer under NDA from day one. Analyses are specified in writing and executed by credentialed in-country analysts inside the alliance partner's environment, so continuity is structural rather than a promise about anybody's calendar.
Do you sell data?
Not in the sense of licensing a database. You cannot buy a feed, a subscription or identifiable records from us. We deliver analysis, reports, dashboards and evidence, and, where the local alliance partner and that market's governance permit, a de-identified analysis-ready dataset or cohort built specifically for your question. That is an extract under a defined permission, not access to somebody's data. Access to raw source data is Japan only, and conditional.
Do you have ISO 27001 certification?
No, and we will not imply otherwise. Aurumetrics works with de-identified patient-level data and publicly available data, never identifiable records, and that data stays in its own market, inside the alliance partner's controlled-access environment, under that market's law. Our controls follow the ISO 27001 and Five Safes frameworks as a design reference, and the principal took a prior organisation through both accreditations.
What makes Asia-Pacific expertise different from general real-world data expertise?
Almost nothing transfers between these markets. Each has its own regulator, health technology assessment body, payment model, coding conventions and data governance law. Knowing how to get evidence generated in one market tells you very little about the next. It is accumulated one market at a time, by doing the work there, which is why regional depth is uncommon and slow to build.
Why did you leave to start this?
Because the answer to clients was repeatedly no, and not for scientific, ethical or governance reasons. The question sat outside the employer's business plan. Every one of those plans was reasonable; deciding what you will not do is what a plan is. But watching answerable questions go unanswered for purely commercial reasons is a good reason to build something structured differently.
Start with a question, not a capability deck.
Thirty minutes with the principal, no sales attendee, because there isn't one.