To accelerate the development of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, the R&D Data Science team at Janssen worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to co-develop and refine a machine learning-based COVID-19 epidemiological disease spread model, building on MIT’s DELPHI scenario analysis tool, capable of predicting future COVID-19 infection spread months in advance at a global level. This model enabled Johnson & Johnson to place its Phase 3 clinical trial sites in high-incidence areas with 90% accuracy. This resulted in Johnson & Johnson concluding a highly-diverse trial approximately six weeks ahead of its original timeline with extensive data on variants, paving the way for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization of the first single-dose COVID-19 vaccine.
