Unlocking LATAM Real World Data: From Invisible to Opportunity

Fragmented healthcare data across Latin America limits research, diagnostics, and public health innovation, explains Cromodata. Millions of clinical records remain isolated, while regional populations are underrepresented in genomic studies. Integrating, anonymizing, and securely licensing health data could improve representation, protect privacy, generate institutional revenue, and enable better AI models and preventive care.

Real-world health data across Latin America remains heavily fragmented, leaving gaps between the clinical information generation and actionable public health solutions. Although healthcare generates approximately 30% of all data produced globally, outpacing every other industry, millions of clinical records, lab results, and imaging studies remain trapped in isolated institutional silos that fail to communicate with one another, says Argentina-based healthtech company Cromodata.

“Behind every data point, a person is waiting for a response. We work so that other patients do not have to wait so long,” says Keila Barral, CEO and Founder, Cromodata.

According to Cromodata, this systemic disconnect directly impacts global scientific representation. Less than 0.4% of individuals represented in international genomic studies belong to Latin American populations. Without regional data assets integrated into modern research pipelines, global AI models, clinical algorithms, and novel drug developments risk learning from demographic and biological realities fundamentally distinct from Latin America's. The company considers that a single patient frequently leaves scattered clinical footprints across disparate providers, from private diagnostic networks like Laboratorio Médico del Chopo to public institutes like IMSS, without any interoperable communication between them.

Healthcare institutions generate vast volumes of information daily through hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and imaging centers. Simultaneously, pharmaceutical companies, AI developers, governments, and researchers urgently require structured data to advance treatment models and improve diagnostics. 

Barral emphasizes that transforming raw health data into structured, anonymized assets under international standards like HIPAA and GDPR can bridge these industry needs. "We take someone's data, turn it into nobody's data, and put it to work for everyone's health," Barral explains, noting that anonymizing responses and displaying aggregated results protects individual patient identity through irreversible de-identification while revealing underlying health patterns and cardiometabolic risk factors across populations. 

Recent health mapping data highlights significant gaps in preventive care and cardiometabolic health. Among individuals with a family history of medical conditions, 52% had not undergone a preventive checkup within the past year. Additionally, among those reporting overweight or obesity, 48% declared having at least one co-occurring cardiometabolic condition. 

To address these disparities, Barral explains that Cromodata operates on a multi-sided marketplace and data licensing framework that structures, tokenizes, and anonymizes health data rather than selling raw records. Because regional regulations focus almost exclusively on personal data laws rather than comprehensive health data standards, applying expert-determination certification under HIPAA and European GDPR standards resolves a critical regulatory gray area, ensuring patient consent is paired with strict identity protection. 

Barral stressed that this framework allows a single anonymized data point to be licensed multiple times, creating a double return. Under a subscription-style licensing model, healthcare institutions retain full data governance, while pharmaceutical developers, AI labs, and researchers purchase time-bound, purpose-specific licenses with a strict prohibition on secondary resale. Health institutions retain the majority of the recurring revenue generated from licensing, with some medical centers earning up to three times more from an anonymized image than what insurers reimbursed for the initial scan, while Latin American patient populations gain proper representation in global medical research, leading to better science, improved diagnostics, and more effective treatments. 

Currently operating across eight countries, with core footprints in Argentina, Brazil, and an expanding operation in Mexico, the network is on track to encompass 15% of Latin America and the Caribbean’s patient population.