Century Health and Balboa Nephrology Partner to Unlock AI-Driven Insights for Clinical Research and Drug Development in Chronic Kidney Diseases

• Chronic kidney disease affects more than 35 million Americans, with progression that varies greatly across patients, making diagnosis and treatment highly complex
  
  
• Century Health's AI extracts complex variables from real-world unstructured clinical data, unlocking insights that were previously inaccessible to researchers and clinicians
  
  
• Together, Century Health and Balboa Nephrology will combine clinical expertise with AI to improve care and accelerate treatments in conditions such as IgA nephropathy, lupus nephritis, and C3 glomerulonephritis

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Century Health, a pioneer in applying AI to real-world data to accelerate research, and Balboa Nephrology, one of the nation's largest independent nephrology practices, today announced a partnership to make high-value real-world data (RWD) usable for clinical research and drug development in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Through this partnership, Balboa Nephrology will use Century Health's clinical AI models to analyze electronic health records (EHR) and surface complex, previously hard-to-capture variables that can inform care decisions, treatment effectiveness, and patient outcomes.

More than 35 million people in the US live with CKD, with cases ranging from mild impairment to kidney failure. CKD is a chronic disease that causes irreversible kidney damage and is highly heterogeneous, with diverse causes, rates of progression, and clinical presentations. This makes every patient's treatment plan unique. Because of this complexity, CKD is an ideal application for AI, which can rapidly structure information dispersed across lab results, outcomes, and physician notes – work that would otherwise be prohibitively time-consuming for researchers.

"At Balboa, our foremost commitment is to our patients," said Terry Behrend, Chief Medical Officer of Balboa Nephrology. "By working with Century Health's platform, we can contribute to essential research that translates real-world patient experiences into improved care and better treatment options across the spectrum of kidney disease, from early diagnosis to post-transplant care."

The most widely used method for monitoring kidney function is estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), a blood test that estimates how well the kidneys filter waste. However, eGFR values can fluctuate due to age, body composition, hydration, diet, and other patient factors, making it difficult to distinguish short-term variation from true changes in kidney function. The Century Health Abstraction and Retrieval Model (CHARM) is well-suited to aggregate eGFR data longitudinally and contextualize it with complementary variables such as proteinuria, biopsy findings, medications, and comorbidities. This provides a clearer view of disease progression and supports more precise retrospective research.

"Working with Balboa Nephrology, one of the largest providers of kidney care in the country, allows Century Health to apply our AI capabilities at scale to ultimately benefit patients," said Vish Srivastava, Co-Founder & CEO at Century Health. "By unlocking difficult-to-capture variables, our platform delivers the insights researchers and life sciences partners need to better understand CKD progression and accelerate new treatment development."

Century Health specializes in extracting valuable information from unstructured clinical notes, helping researchers reduce the need for costly, time-consuming new data collection by unlocking evidence already present in care settings. All analyses use de-identified data and follow strict privacy safeguards consistent with HIPAA. Enriching retrospective datasets with validated clinical measures creates new opportunities to advance kidney research and accelerate drug development.

About Balboa Nephrology Medical Group
Balboa Nephrology is a nationally recognized leader in kidney care, delivering high-quality, outcomes-driven, and value-based care across Southern California. Founded in 1973, the practice has grown to 56 board-certified nephrologists and 8 advanced care practitioners serving patients through 18 clinical offices and 88 dialysis clinics in San Diego, Orange County, and Imperial Valley. Honored with the Renal Physicians Association Exemplary Practice Award and recognized as a top performer in the CMMI Comprehensive ESRD Care program, Balboa Nephrology continues to advance kidney health with a patient-centered approach. For more information, visit www.balboanephrology.com.

About Century Health
Century Health is a health technology company transforming how real-world evidence is generated from clinical data. With its AI-powered platform, Century Health unlocks rich, high-quality datasets from fragmented and siloed clinical information to fuel groundbreaking research and industry collaborations. By automating data curation and enrichment, the platform eliminates manual data entry while upholding the highest standards of patient privacy. Partnering with leading academic institutions, healthcare providers, and life sciences organizations, Century Health accelerates breakthrough treatments with the power of AI. For more information, visit www.century.health.

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SOURCE Century Health