Validating an Antibody Test to Predict Infection Rates in COVID-19

Despite high effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in the real-world, there have been cases of fully vaccinated patients contracting COVID. A diagnostics company with an approved test for measuring COVID antibody levels wanted to understand if certain thresholds of antibody levels were associated with stronger immunity and protection from infection. The hypothesis was that if there were consistent observable levels of antibodies associated with lower rates of infection, the test could be a predictor of patients likely to become infected with COVID after vaccination.

For this, the client needed to study patients with different levels of antibodies from the test and observe whether they developed COVID over time. This required identification of a cohort of patients that had been vaccinated, tokenizing and matching them to antibody test results and electronic health records.