HHS Technology Group, Datavant, and Mathematica Partner to Combat Chronic Kidney Disease

The nation's largest COVID-19 Research Database and advanced data-analysis platform powers the early identification of patients at risk of developing chronic kidney disease

HHS Technology Group, LLC™ (HTG); Datavant, and Mathematica announced they are collaborating to offer public and private sector access to invaluable resources to fight the invisible epidemic of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and long-term COVID-19.

“CKD is a common, serious, costly, and often preventable disease,” said Linda Smith-Wheelock, president and CEO of the National Kidney Foundation of Michigan. “More than one million Michigan adults, or one in seven, have the disease. Unfortunately, many people don't know they have CKD, as there are few symptoms in its early stages. Michigan Medicaid spends over $1 billion yearly on CKD, and available data shows that at least 40 percent of all COVID-19-related deaths are tied to kidney disease.”

This partnership will increase the knowledge, awareness, and understanding of preventable kidney disease; promote the adoption of evidence-based strategies to reduce CKD; and identify financially sustainable approaches for CKD prevention, detection, and management. Individuals with kidney disease are at a significantly higher risk of experiencing poor outcomes from COVID-19, making this research vital.

“Chronic kidney disease is preventable through early identification, which makes it all the more agonizing that so many Americans continue to experience this silent killer,” said Brett Furst, president of HHS Technology Group. “As a result of this initiative, state Medicaid agencies now have the data analytic tools to move quickly on chronic kidney disease prevention and reduce preventable disease, deaths, and hospitalizations.”

HTG, Datavant, and Mathematica have designed a real-time data-analysis platform that captures, aggregates, matches, and evaluates data across various sources, including Medicare, Medicaid, hospitals, labs, physician offices, and commercial payers. With actionable insights from this rich data, medical providers can identify and intervene with patients at risk of developing CKD and long COVID earlier than conventional means.

Industry stakeholders will now be able to access the nation's largest COVID-19 Research Database to measure the effectiveness of these programs and develop strategies to address health disparities in the vulnerable populations at elevated risk for CKD and COVID-19. The Research Database is an initiative led by numerous prominent companies with a mission to accelerate real-world pandemic research to understand the disease and inform evidence-based health care policy. As of May 2022, the COVID-19 Research Database contained more than 85 billion HIPAA-compliant, patient-level records and has powered over 70 publications and presentations addressing the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on population health.

“The effects of long COVID can create devastating repercussions for patients who are already experiencing chronic conditions, such as CKD, diabetes, and hypertension,” said Travis May, founder and president of Datavant. “The COVID-19 Research Database is a tremendous asset enabling novel public-health insights by delivering real-world data to stakeholders throughout the healthcare continuum.”

Discover your Data, HTG’s robust analytics platform, powers the Research Database by leveraging advanced technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence. These technologies, combined with sophisticated data analytics, deliver insights and deep understanding, allowing data exploration in real time to accelerate and accurately solve some of health care's most complex questions. The team is utilizing AWS with its cloud-first approach to solving these problems, allowing them to rapidly develop a robust, secure, scalable, and efficient system to perform this vital work.

“With real-time analytics that deliver insights for early detection of high-risk patients, medical providers are empowered to deliver timely diagnosis and treatments for better health outcomes,” said Christopher Trenholm, senior vice president and general manager of the Health Unit at Mathematica. “We are proud to partner with HTG and Datavant in this important initiative to take action and support solutions that fight this deadly disease.”