NIH awards grant for HIV treatment monitoring, analysis

The NIH has awarded a $3.5 million grant to researchers at Brown University for the monitoring and analysis of clinical HIV treatment data as a means to improve care, according to a press release.

The researchers will work with AMPATH, an HIV care program based in Eldoret, Kenya, to develop treatment methods, software and lab technologies based on currently available clinical data. By improving statistical analysis, different areas of HIV treatment could be made more efficient.

“This grant is emblematic of the emerging field of ‘data science,’ wherein new and innovative methods of statistical analysis and computing are directly motivated by and applied within a specific context,” Joseph Hogan, ScD, of the Brown University School of Public Health, said in the release. “We hope that projects like ours can help AMPATH and programs like it make the best use of the information and resources available to them.”

Along with improving patient health, the researchers will use the 5-year award to reduce monitoring costs, according to the press release. This includes optimizing the frequency and timing of diagnostic procedures and reducing the overall number of lab assays required to determine a patient’s viral load.

“It will combine multidisciplinary clinical, laboratory and statistical expertise to improve care for HIV-infected patients in settings where physicians need to limit the tests they conduct for patient care due to infrastructure and resource constraints,” Rami Kantor, MD, of the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown, said in the release. “Development of methods and close work with and training of clinicians and laboratory personnel in Kenya, as we propose to do, will impact patient care and optimize resource use.”