British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline will form a strategic partnership with Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases (GIRD) in China.

The strategic collaboration will focus on respiratory disease management system, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

According to the company, a health big data system will be developed through information sharing and covering different levels of healthcare organizations and reimbursement systems.

Real world evidence (RWE) and payment evidence will be generated and provided to relative authorities for the support of health and reimbursement policy making, streamlining of clinical path management, and effective development of hierarchical medical system.

The strategic collaboration includes a prospective COPD registry study and "New Breath, Constant Care" China Asthma Patient Management Project.

The COPD registry study will cover 5,000 patients and establish an in-depth understanding of COPD disease characteristics, disease evolution, disease management, as well as evolvement of the treatment paradigm.

The registry will also be able to measure COPD disease burden, and predict disease outcome in China. This could further help inform the future COPD disease management strategy in China.

The project aims at establishing and improving asthma disease management result through more standardized clinic information and pathways, better doctor/patient communication and long-term big data analysis.

It is estimated that the project will cover at least 60,000 asthma patients in regular management in three years.