Stanford Strikes Analytics Partnership to Evaluate COVID-19 Health Outcomes

Researchers from Stanford’s Center for Population Health Sciences will utilize healthcare analytics company Komodo Health’s data platform to support studies focused on health outcomes related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Initial studies will focus on evaluating the real-world impact of COVID-19 on health outcomes across various populations, including research into pandemic-related care disparities and the relationships between social determinants of health (SDOH), COVID testing, and vaccinations. Researchers are also interested in the pandemic’s impact on cancer survival, treatment, and outcomes.

Previous population health research has shown that geographic factors, such as living in a rural community, and racial or ethnic background, like being Black or Hispanic, are correlated with increased health disparities and adverse outcomes related to COVID-19. Efforts to use data analytics and SDOH to address these disparities and promote health equity are ongoing.

In addition to population health studies, researchers will look at coronavirus-related research in infectious disease, pediatrics, surgery, population health, obstetrics and gynecology, and other areas.

Komodo’s platform, Sentinel, uses real-world, de-identified patient data and artificial intelligence-driven (AI) analytics to help researchers generate insights. According to the press release, the platform offers multiple analytics modules that researchers can use to build algorithms, design clinical trials, evaluate complex disease patterns, and explore health disparities.

Stanford Medicine’s partnership with Komodo is the latest in the organization’s efforts to advance COVID-19 research.

In April 2020, Stanford launched a consortium with the Scripps Research Translational Institute (SRTI) aimed at studying how wearables could be used to address COVID-19. Through the consortium, the two organizations partnered with Fitbit to aggregate data from mHealth programs researching this area.

The consortium builds on two initiatives previously launched by Stanford and SRTI. Stanford’s Healthcare Innovation Lab launched the COVID-19 Wearables Study, which focused on determining if wearables data could be used to predict the pre-symptomatic onset of the disease. SRTI had unveiled DETECT, a national project to evaluate how wearables data could be integrated into public health surveillance.

Stanford Medicine and Fitbit also collaborated on related research in April 2021.

The two partnered with the Pacific-12 (Pac-12) athletic conference, which comprises over 1,000 college athletes in sports such as basketball, football, soccer, and volleyball, to study the value of wearables in identifying and tracking infectious diseases like COVID-19.

Over the course of the study, which took place through the end of 2021, participating athletes were required to wear a Fitbit Sense smartwatch and undergo frequent coronavirus testing. Previous research has shown that day-to-day changes in clinically relevant health metrics can indicate the earliest signs of infection and illness before symptoms appear. This research was designed to build on these insights, but results have not yet been published.