PA Health Systems Launch Big Data-Driven Kidney Disease Collaboration

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Penn Medicine) have launched the Penn-CHOP Kidney Innovation Center, which will support research to improve patient care for adults and children with kidney disease.

The collaboration will focus on the prevention, early detection, and treatment of kidney disease and its complications, which create significant clinical burdens across the care continuum.

“More than 850 million people suffer from kidney disease, and kidney disease is one of the fastest growing causes of death, so there is a pressing need to accelerate breakthroughs in our understanding and treatment of the condition,” said Katalin Susztak, MD, PhD, a professor of nephrology and genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of the new innovation center, in the press release. “This center will draw from experts across both institutions, using interdisciplinary collaboration as the driving force to accelerate research that improves the health and well-being of all patients with kidney disease."

By pulling experts from both CHOP and Penn Medicine, the center's leaders aim to accelerate research through big data analytics and interdisciplinary collaboration. The center will have three main areas of focus: fostering cutting-edge discoveries, recruiting and growing top talent in areas that support the center’s mission, and supporting the next generation of nephrology researchers.

The collaboration will include a training and mentorship program for up-and-coming researchers. It will also allow pediatric and adult kidney researchers to work together, which may lead to research breakthroughs.

“By bringing pediatric and adult kidney researchers under one umbrella, we will accelerate the pace of discovery for both populations,” said Michelle Denburg, MD, co-director of the center, director of research for the nephrology division at CHOP, and an associate professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Penn, in a press release. “Some processes of kidney disease are shared in adults and children, and others are unique, but in both cases, promoting crosstalk between researchers can shed light on mechanisms of disease for both children and adults and lead to precise diagnostics and treatments.”

The center will bring together experts in clinical epidemiology, biostatistics, bioinformatics, computational biology, genetics, pathology, physiology, biochemistry, immunology, genomics, pharmacology, psychology, and other areas. Researchers will investigate the molecular pathways, genetics, and biochemistry involved in kidney disease to identify targets for new therapies.

These efforts are part of a growing trend of health systems leveraging data to bolster population health management.

In January, Nemours Children’s Health, a pediatric health system in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida, optimized its data analytics and value-based care strategies to enable efficient population identification and COVID-19 vaccine delivery for its primary care populations.

In July, Ohio-based Akron Children’s Hospital launched a strategic, multi-year partnership with data and analytics technology company Health Catalyst to advance population health and improve patient outcomes.