Vibrent Health and Virginia Commonwealth University launch a global twin research platform to enable collaboration, accelerate discoveries in genetic research and precision medicine

FAIRFAX, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today Vibrent Health announced the launch of a Global Twin Research Platform (GTRP), in partnership with the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), to better understand health similarities and differences between twins by studying the varying genetic and environmental influences on development, including physical development, intelligence, emotion and cognition.

Globally there are about 40 million twins, and approximately 1.75 million twins are enrolled in twin registries. The GTRP presents an opportunity to consolidate data from many different, disconnected twin registries so that researchers have access to larger combined datasets that could help accelerate their scientific discoveries. Large scale longitudinal research of twin pairs can provide unique scientific data about genetic and environmental influences underlying individual differences in twins. Such data sets about twins can aid researchers with new scientific discoveries in the development of new therapies.

“The virtual nature of digital research, utilizing mobile devices or computers from anywhere, allows us to engage twins for decentralized studies around the globe,” said Dr. Judy Silberg, VCU Scientific Director of Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry. The GTRP will be a key tool in behavioral genetics and in content fields, from biology to psychology. The interoperability of the platform with many broad sources of data represents novel advancements in twin research.”

The GTRP will operate in collaboration with VCU Wright Center, a Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) funded research hub, creating the possibility of large, international cohorts of twins available to participate in studies by the country’s top biomedical research institutions and to the benefit of the research community.

The platform builds off Vibrent Health’s ongoing work with National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, for which Vibrent provides the central software technology platform and digital tools supporting the recruitment, data collection, engagement and retention of participants of the million-person precision medicine research initiative.

The flexible and scalable GTRP provides broad software capabilities for participants, study teams, researchers, sponsors and regulatory compliance. It enables data collection from participants’ health information through e-consent, surveys, electronic health records (EHRs), remote biospecimens, wearables and interoperability with other data sources. Study teams are empowered through digital marketing, communications, one-on-one engagement and virtual collaboration tools, dashboards and reports. Researchers get access to health data, protocol compliance, operational data insights and dashboards. Sponsors get insights into the level of compliance with study protocols and other regulatory aspects.

“Launching of a digital platform for twin research was a natural progression for Vibrent as we pursue our mission to help generate and analyze massive data sets to advance precision medicine,” said Praduman “PJ” Jain, CEO and founder of Vibrent Health. “Our vision is to facilitate creation of a cohort of cohorts for researchers to grow statistically significant data sets of genetic and epigenetic factors that will help predict, prevent, diagnose and treat health conditions and diseases and empower people to lead healthier lives.”

About Vibrent Health

Vibrent Health’s mission is to accelerate health research to optimize human health through precision technology and digital tools that empower participant engagement, research analytics and research management for researchers, research organizations and research participants. Through its Digital Health Solutions Platform, the company provides a large-scale versatile platform for health research. The SaaS platform provides an infrastructure for data collection from broad sources including genomics, environment, lifestyle, behaviors and electronic health records. Since February 2017 Vibrent Health has served as the Participant Technology Systems Center (PTSC) for the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, which aims to collect health data from one million or more people to support a wide variety of research studies. To learn more, visit vibrenthealth.com

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