Neighborhoods Determine Health

Where you live shapes how long — and how well — you live. We build the tools to prove it, and to change it.

The Patient Centered Media Lab is a population health / digital health lab directed by Adam T. Perzynski, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Sociology at Case Western Reserve University and The MetroHealth System. Neighborhoods and place-based health equity are our throughline — but the lab's reach extends across digital health more broadly, from AI-native research software to venture-backed medical devices born in our own labs.

Flagship Project

Digital Twin Neighborhoods

NIH / NIA R01 AG080486 · $1.57M

Building virtual replicas of real neighborhoods to fight place-based health inequality

Led by Dr. Perzynski with co-Principal Investigator Jarrod Dalton, PhD (Cleveland Clinic), Digital Twin Neighborhoods combines de-identified electronic health record data with rich social determinants of health data to build sophisticated, privacy-protecting digital models of real communities. These "digital twins" let researchers and health systems simulate how changes to housing, greenspace, services, or policy would actually change health outcomes in a given neighborhood — before spending a dollar or moving a family.

This is the cornerstone of nearly two decades of the lab's work connecting redlining, neighborhood disadvantage, cardiovascular risk, dementia, depression, and aging to the places people call home — grounded directly in community conversations with the residents these models represent.

Read about the full research program on neighborhoods and health →

Software We Build

From research question to working tool

In Development

Beacon

An AI-native health risk assessment platform — the lab's next-generation approach to turning individual and neighborhood data into actionable, personalized risk guidance.

pcmlab.org/beacon →

Place-Based Research

Kerkidos

An AI-native platform for place-based, mixed-methods research — weaving GPS tracks, visual elements, and transcribed interviews into a mappable, codeable record of lived experience, with researchers in control of every AI-assisted step.

kerkidos.com →

Open Source · R Package

sociome

An open-source R package that operationalizes social determinants of health data for researchers — used across the lab's neighborhood and health equity studies, freely available on CRAN and GitHub.

CRAN →  |  GitHub →

See all lab software, including TritonX and Global Health Metrics products →

Books

By Adam T. Perzynski, PhD

R

Racism, Microaggressions, and Allyship in Health Care: A Narrative Approach to Learning

Adebambo & Perzynski, editors · Springer Nature, 2024
Buy on Amazon
S

Structural Equation Modeling for Health and Medicine

Gunzler, Perzynski & Carle · Taylor & Francis / CRC Press, 2021
Buy on Amazon
H

Health Disparities: Weaving a New Understanding through Case Narratives

Perzynski, Shick & Adebambo, editors · Springer Nature, 2019
Buy on Amazon
In the News

Recent media coverage

Ideastream Public Media · Apr 2025

MetroHealth doctors explore microaggressions in health care in new book

Listen / read →

Crain's Cleveland Business

$3M grant will help Cleveland Clinic research reducing health care disparities

Read →

CWRU The Daily

Jarrod Dalton and Adam Perzynski discuss digital twin technology in healthcare

Read →

See all media coverage →

Spinoff Companies

From lab bench to real-world deployment

TritonX

A wearable, non-invasive hydration monitor invented in the Patient Centered Media Lab — now venture-backed and in a Phase 2 clinical trial.

tritonxinc.com →

Global Health Metrics

A health data science company delivering scientifically validated health risk assessment tools (Healthy Life HRA, Assess.Health, Housing.Health and more) to patients, providers, and health systems. Dr. Perzynski serves as Chief Science and Strategy Officer.

globalhealthmetrics.com →  |  ghmcorp.com →