Supported by a new $3.14 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to the Cleveland Clinic, researchers are using a new technology known as “digital twins” to better understand differences in health care depending on where a person lives. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth aim to use this information to develop strategies to reduce these health disparities.

The research team, led by Cleveland Clinic’s Jarrod Dalton, Ph.D., and MetroHealth’s Adam Perzynski, Ph.D., will use digital twins—complex data models built from electronic health records—to analyze trends in a joint research registry of more than 250,000 patients. from health systems.

This technology helps to accurately represent the complex economic, environmental and social factors that can lead to inequalities between neighboring communities.

“Where a person lives or works can affect their health outcomes, including life expectancy and the risk of developing diseases such as cancer or diabetes. Americans from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes and are expected to live 10 years less than wealthier Americans,” said Dr. Dalton, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Population Health Research. “Our goal is to develop an approach that will help health systems, governments and organizations collaborate and develop strategies to address clear differences.”

The grant is based on previous research published by Drs. Dalton and Perczynski Annals of Internal Medicine that the area in which people live may be associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease. They analyzed patient data and found that people from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas had more than double the rate of serious cardiovascular events predicted by traditional risk assessment tools.

Under the new grant, the team will first create infrastructure for “digital twin neighborhoods” by synthesizing de-identified health information from electronic health records that will include some information about the social determinants of health or aspects of a patient’s life that may affect health. education and results as they grow older.

These virtual neighborhoods, digital replicas of real communities including biological, social and geographic information, increase access to data and algorithms to understand local health and social disparities.

They will then evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in initial projects using the tool: evaluation of regional mental health initiatives at the district level; assessing the potential impact of introducing new services on the burden of heart disease in communities; and an assessment of how frequent and/or economically driven changes of residence affect health outcomes.

“This project aims to chart a new course for understanding local community health strategies and improving health outcomes,” said Dr. Perzynski of the MetroHealth Community Health Research Institute (PHRI). “Assessing technologies such as digital twins in the research space can make it easier for organizations to apply a data-driven approach to public health interventions. Instead of building these models from scratch, other healthcare systems and organizations can adapt the framework to suit their needs.”

“The health disparities in the neighborhoods in Cleveland are very severe, some of the largest in the country,” Dr. Dalton said. “This is the biggest health problem of our time.”

Additional collaborators on the research project include Drs. Elizabeth Pfoch and Glen Tuxler of the Center for Values ​​Based Care Research at the Cleveland Clinic, and Dr. Kristen Berg, Douglas Ganzler and Yasir Tarabichi of PHRI MetroHealth.

“We are committed to supporting lifelong health for our patients and the communities they live in,” says Serpil Erzurum, MD, chief scientist at the Cleveland Clinic. “To help us begin to address and treat the root causes of disease, we need to understand what brought us to this point. Leveraging innovative approaches such as digital twin communities is the future of population research and will show how we can better bridge health disparities to bring about positive change in our communities.”

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