Komodo_blog-placeholder
BACK TO PERSPECTIVES

Komodo Collaborates With Academic Institutions To Help Experts Answer Complex Medical Questions

Blog-1

Data is power. That’s never been clearer than it is now, especially in healthcare. The volume, fidelity, linkability, and comprehensiveness of our datasets shape the research we do, the policies we support, and the outcomes we achieve for patients.

Even for some of the globe’s top clinical researchers, data access can be the principal limitation in which research questions can be asked and answered. Researchers commonly deal with siloed data that is not connected to historic, concurrent, or post-study datasets. As many researchers know, data sharing in academia is limited — a JAMA study published last year found that, of roughly 1,800 manuscripts in which authors declared willingness to share data, over 80% declined or did not respond to data share requests. To produce the biggest advances in clinical research, our greatest minds and sources of expertise must be matched with gold-standard data.

As a part of Komodo Health’s mission to reduce the global burden of disease, we are bringing de-identified data, AI/ML-powered algorithms, and deep industry experience together in partnerships with select academic researchers. Our aim is to give these experts what they need to answer some of healthcare’s toughest questions, and to offer insights that only this combination of assets unlocks.

Shaping the future through collaboration
On August 4, we announced our partnership with Stanford Medicine’s Center for Population Health Sciences, where a group of 35 researchers will use our platform to publish on the short- and long-term health impacts of COVID-19. Komodo’s Sentinel application and Healthcare Map will be used to investigate health outcomes among different patient populations, including disparities in care and social determinants of COVID-19 testing, COVID-19 vaccinations, and the pandemic’s effect on cancer survival, treatment, and outcomes. 

In a new partnership with the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, researchers from its Pharmaceutical Health Services Research department are using Sentinel to generate insights into the COVID-19 pandemic, including its impact on disruption to care, treatment, and healthcare access. They will also investigate the pandemic’s impact on several therapeutic areas including clinical depression and Huntington’s disease, using Sentinel to build nuanced cohorts that incorporate clinical biomarkers, laboratory tests, patient-reported outcomes, and symptom scales — research that will help inform the next generation of healthcare providers.

Komodo has also partnered with life science industry researchers to publish powerful RWE findings drawn from our platform. For example, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation leveraged Komodo’s Healthcare Map to investigate the safety of a drug used in the treatment of macular degeneration. Komodo data was used alongside patient data from a national ophthalmology registry to create a cohort of over 10,000 patients and published a subsequent paper with their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2021. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Cerner Enviza (formerly Kantar Health) used Komodo’s closed-claims and continuous enrollment data to explore the relationship between the use of a common osteoporosis drug, and outcomes of COVID-19 infection. The resulting poster was published in Elsevier’s Value in Health journal in June 2022, and included data from nearly a million patient journeys. 

The power of combined strengths 
For researchers, access to Komodo’s platform offers a unique opportunity to query the most comprehensive, complete, and validated healthcare dataset available. Our Healthcare Map contains over 330 million unique U.S. patient journeys and patient information that is typically siloed and incomplete. Census-level demographic data is paired with complete patient journeys, including patient behaviors, prescriptions, medical claims, and diagnoses that are linkable with individual healthcare providers and organizations, and are updated in near real time.

To garner insights from the Healthcare Map, researchers leverage Komodo’s technology platform, which makes it easy to build analytics modules and model disease trends. Complex questions can be answered with unprecedented depth, from large-scale trends in health or healthcare, to individual treatment pathways in ultra-rare diseases.

Especially valuable to our academic partners are the 150 million longitudinal, "payer-complete" datasets in the Map — offering an unprecedented level of depth and insight into patient journeys, including therapy starts, switches, completion, and stops, as well as continuity across providers, centers, and health plans. This high-fidelity longitudinal view is a uniquely detailed degree of patient-level visibility over weeks, months, and years. Unlike open payer claims data, closed data offers the clearest snapshot of all of a patient's activities within a time frame of interest. Open- and closed-claims data can both be used across many areas of outcomes research, and are even more powerful when combined.

Data to power change from all angles 
There are so many ways we can deliver our RWE innovation model to reduce the burden of disease, and facilitating high-impact research on healthcare and outcomes with academics and patient advocacy groups is a key part of our work. It's our goal to provide the analytical firepower needed to improve time-to-diagnosis, close gaps in care, and accelerate research to deliver impact for patients. In all of our work, patients remain the central focus. By combining the top experts with the best data and analytics, we have the potential to significantly shape public health for the better, improving the lives of patients and their families.

Read more about our work with Stanford or the University of Maryland in our recent press releases.

Read more about life as a Dragon in our Culture series, and to learn more about Komodo, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, and YouTube.

By providing your email address, you agree to receive marketing communications from Komodo Health. For more information on how we process personal information, please refer to our published Privacy Notice.
SUBSCRIBE
Recent Stories