Tempus, a technology company advancing precision medicine through the practical application of artificial intelligence in healthcare, today announced its expansion into infectious diseases, starting with COVID-19. Tempus is leveraging its existing capabilities to launch a diagnostic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, as well as a broad-based, healthcare operations initiative to aggregate and structure clinical and molecular data collected from COVID-19 patients around the country, deriving the real-world evidence needed for future research to inform patient treatment.
PCR testing is one of the testing options authorized by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to detect and track the spread of COVID-19. Tempus’ CAP-accredited/CLIA-certified labs in Chicago and Atlanta will offer their tests in accordance with the FDA’s Laboratory Developed Test (LDT) and Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) framework to support the growth and acceleration of testing in the U.S. Over the next several weeks, Tempus expects to be testing approximately 30,000 patients weekly across both labs, with the goal of scaling those efforts two to three times over the next several months. In addition, Tempus is working on a known respiratory pathogen panel, which will include COVID-19, along with other common viruses, to be run on its next generation sequencing platform. Tempus hopes to bring that new assay to market this summer to compliment its PCR testing.
Simultaneously, Tempus is conducting a large-scale initiative to structure and aggregate real-world data at scale for COVID-positive patients. In collaboration with academic partners, Tempus is supporting the fight against COVID-19 by rapidly collecting and curating clinical data on up to 50,000 patients, and also performing full RNA transcriptome research sequencing on up to 10,000 patients. Tempus plans on making the real-world data available to academic partners, consistent with applicable privacy laws, to supplement their existing efforts to understand symptoms, treatment, and response for patients battling the novel coronavirus.
“The Tempus platform was designed to be disease agnostic, and we are in a unique position to support existing efforts to help identify patients infected with the coronavirus and help physicians make data-driven decisions when treating patients,” said Founder and CEO Eric Lefkofsky.
Tempus structures and curates hundreds of thousands of clinical patient records per year. Over the past month, the company has configured its technology and processes to ingest and curate clinical records of COVID-19 patients. Tempus has partnered with leading health experts to build a data model that analyzes critical data fields, spanning phenotypic, morphologic, and molecular attributes for patients that have tested positive and been treated. The company hopes that this dataset and accompanying diagnostic algorithms will help stratify patients in the future. In addition, this data library should provide a foundation for future infectious disease research and provide important insights to reduce the impact of future pandemics.
About Tempus
Tempus is a technology company advancing precision medicine through the practical application of artificial intelligence in healthcare. With one of the world’s largest libraries of clinical and molecular data, and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful, Tempus enables physicians to make real-time, data-driven decisions to deliver personalized patient care and in parallel facilitates discovery, development and delivery of optimal therapeutics. The goal is for each patient to benefit from the treatment of others who came before by providing physicians with tools that learn as the company gathers more data. For more information, visit tempus.com.