.png)
Apriqot is a community magnifying glass that enables data-driven decision-making.
TM
What We Do
At Apriqot, we improve the health of communities by bringing data to life. We develop health data analytics solutions that combine publicly-available data on demographics, geographics, and public health metrics.
We provide innovative tools and services that empower public health agencies, health systems, foundations, and community organizations to understand and serve their populations more precisely and efficiently.
Capabilities
-
Advanced demographic and population modeling
-
Small area estimation and community micro-simulations
-
Geographic and location optimization
-
Public health surveillance systems
-
Survey design and analysis
Applications
-
Health, education, environmental, and economic analysis
- Community health assessments
- Resource allocation and targeting
- Funding, personnel, services, infrastructure
- Funding, personnel, services, infrastructure
- Program eligibility and access estimates
- Policy analysis and risk mapping
Our Projects
Mapping Food Insecurity in Southern Maine with MaineHealth and the City of Portland
Apriqot is engaged with MaineHealth and Portland Public Health for a series of projects, the first of which is generating population estimates for indicators of food security in Cumberland and York County that are both geographically and demographically downscaled. This project will help improve the food security of Southern Maine residents.
Medical Baseline Program Eligibility with California’s Investor-Owned Utilities
In conjunction with Verdant Associates (a California-based consulting agency), we will produce customer eligibility estimates for a Medical Baseline program offered by California's four investor-owned utilities. For this project, we are creating estimates of the proportion of the population whose health condition or use of a medical device may qualify them to receive energy discounts. Ultimately, these estimates will aid the four utilities with their Medical Baseline program outreach and enrollment efforts.
Alzheimer’s Surveillance and Detection with the
Maine CDC
We are producing geographically detailed estimates of the burden of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRD) at the sub-county level in Maine. These estimates will assist the MaineCDC with surveillance and detection of ADRD in Maine communities and provide insights to help them allocate their public health resources and outreach efforts effectively. This work is supported by a Roux Institute Accelerator Grant.
Nicole Hewes
Director of Projects & Communications
Greg Cohan, MD
Director of Product
Development
Muskan Khandelwal
Machine Leaning Engineer
Starting in Jan. 2025
Rafael G. Ramos, PhD
Geospatial Consultant
Our Advisors
About Apriqot
During their decades working in the field of public health, Ken and Kevin kept encountering the frustration of needing to make community-level decisions without crucial local data. Without access to high-quality data at the community level, health officials and organizations often miss community insights and trends that should be in plain sight. This lack of localized data can lead to ineffective decisions and inefficient use of limited resources and taxpayer funds.
Early in the COVID response, Ken and Kevin sat on opposite sides of the country but were both trying to map the multigenerational households in their jurisdictions. Marin County, California, and the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene both possessed the resources to task epidemiologists with identifying this critical type of household – but they recognized that many of the country’s public health departments and other community organizations did not. Additionally, the simultaneous analysis to answer the question was done on the same public data sets - a massive inefficiency.
Apriqot aims to solve both of these pain points – the absence of quality local data to inform decision-making and the limited resources of many community-serving organizations – by making highly-actionable, localized population estimates accessible to the stakeholders who need them most.
Apriqot was formally founded in 2023 and embedded at Northeastern’s Roux Institute through the inaugural class of the Future of Healthcare Founders Residency.
Why Are We Called Apriqot?
There are many different reasons why we’re called Apriqot.
First, we like apricots!
But we also named our company Apriqot because apricots kept coming up while we developed the idea. For example, Apriqot establishes and maintains many copies of the places we are characterizing, kind of like an ORCHARD. And within each characterization (a TREE) there are many individuals (like the APRICOTS). We also call the process of bringing in users’ local data and merging it with our data GRAFTING, and some of the methods we use to produce estimates sometimes include KERNEL methods.
Also, we like that apricot is a color, which makes some decisions a lot easier (e.g., what color should our logo be?)
And apricots have a nice blush to them, which makes them look a little like people.
But the real reason we are called Apriqot is a bit more "mathy." In public health, one typically uses p for the probability of having some condition or disease. If you are talking about a lot of people in community, then pit would be the probability of the ith person have the disease at time t. And if you wanted to talk about the average probability, you might use pot, pronounced “p naught t,” as the average probability of having the disease at time t. So the chance of not having a condition is 1-p, but that is also called q. So qot is the average probability of not having the condition or disease in the community– the probability of being well. That is the “-qot.”
And we added that to one of the most boring names that we thought of and didn’t use as our company name: “Applied Population Research Inc.” 🥱
And that is why we’re called Apriqot. Now if we could just figure out how it’s pronounced - ape-ricot or ah-pricot… Let us know what you think.
Let's Connect
Proud Partners with:
