Juniper Communities Announces Partnership with Dascena for Data-Driven, Rapid COVID-19 Testing


Juniper Communities, a national owner operator of seniors housing communities, announced today it has entered into a partnership with Oakland, Calif-based Dascena, Inc., a machine learning diagnostic algorithm company that is targeting early disease intervention to improve patient care outcomes, to tackle COVID-19 head-on.

The partnership enables Juniper to deploy Dascena’s advanced analytics to accurately determine which residents in their communities are at highest risk of contracting COVID-19 and have the greatest need for COVID-19 testing. Juniper will utilize Dascena’s state-of-the-art molecular laboratory to drastically speed up turnaround times and lower the cost of providing routine COVID-19 diagnostic testing to residents.

“We are proud to partner with an innovative organization like Dascena to find a proactive strategy to protect citizens, particularly older adults and others with chronic conditions that make them especially susceptible to the virus. This work is the first stop on a roadmap which we trust will afford us and others in our industry access to rapid, effective and less expensive testing that will also be easier to administer,” said Lynne Katzmann, President and Founder of Juniper Communities. “With access to Dascena’s advanced algorithm and diagnostic testing capabilities, we believe we will facilitate earlier and more effective detection, and help our communities pull through these unprecedented times.”

Dascena has recently been selected to participate in the RADx initiative by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which aims to accelerate innovative efforts in the COVID-19 diagnostic testing landscape to enable millions of tests per week by the fall in the United States. Further, Dascena is participating as a component of a public-private partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for early identification of sepsis in COVID-19 patients.

“Delays in the detection and reporting of COVID-19 can contribute significantly to adverse outcomes,” said Jonathan Roberts, Vice President of Strategy at Dascena. “Not only can we assist in identifying individuals at high risk of contracting COVID-19 through our machine learning algorithms, but we can also promptly perform economical testing and efficiently report back whether or not individuals have COVID-19 through our molecular CLIA laboratory.”

About Juniper Communities

Juniper Communities, a leader in quality, value and innovation in long-term care, operates seniors housing communities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado that emphasize residents’ well-being, interaction and security. Our communities and approach to housing and care offers residents the opportunity to live a full life, regardless of age or health. Juniper’s innovative Connect4Life program has been proven to improve residents’ care by decreasing hospitalizations, re-hospitalizations and urgent care visits, while offering potential cost savings to public programs such as Medicare. To learn more about the many ways Juniper Communities innovates in support of our residents, visit junipercommunities.com.

About Dascena

Dascena develops data-driven diagnostics solutions to enable early disease intervention and improve care outcomes for patients. For more information, visit Dascena.com.

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