John Larkin, PhD

Senior Director, Strategic Operations

John Larkin

John Larkin, PhD, CCRC, is the Senior Director of Strategic Operations at the Renal Research Institute (RRI), where he serves as the de facto Chief of Staff. He earned his PhD in Basic and Applied Epidemiology and Clinical Investigation with high honors from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná and a Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Idaho State University College of Pharmacy. He is also certified as a Clinical Research Coordinator by the Association of Clinical Research Professionals.

Dr. Larkin has over 15 years of experience leading global teams in research and healthcare quality improvement projects. Previously, he was the Collaborations Lead in the Clinical Advanced Analytics division of the Global Medical Office at Fresenius Medical Care. His expertise includes basic and clinical research, healthcare data analysis, AI in medicine, bioethics, and research operations. He has authored more than 45 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 200 scientific congress abstracts and has supported collaborations with industry and academia to advance innovation.

Dr. Larkin chairs the MONitoring Dialysis Outcomes (MONDO) Data Management Group and serves on its Steering Committee. His work spans preclinical neuroendocrinology, clinical investigations of drugs and devices, healthcare epidemiology in nephrology, and AI applications in medicine. Current research interests include physical activity, patient-reported outcomes, environmental determinants of health in renal diseases, leveraging technology to address unmet needs in medicine, and global epidemiology in chronic diseases.

Recent Articles by John Larkin, PhD

  • Kidney international reports
    September 9, 2025
    Creating a Globally Distributed Multinational Dialysis Database - The ApolloDialDb Initiative
    Melanie Wolf, Yue Jiao, Kaitlyn Croft, Carly Hahn Contino, Justin Zimbelman, Kanti Singh, Mitesh Soni, Andrew Dickinson, Jeroen P Kooman, Dinesh Chatoth, Adrian Guinsburg, Stefano Stuard, Milind Nikam, Michelle Carver, Len Usvyat, Franklin W Maddux, Sheetal Chaudhuri, John Larkin
    RESULTSApollo captures data from January 2018 to March 2021 from 40 countries and 543,169 patients worldwide (4.6% in Asia-Pacific [AP], 13.9% in Europe, Middle East, and Africa [EMEA], 7.0% in Latin America [LA], and 74.5% in North America [NA]). It contains demographic data, 35,874,039 laboratory, and 140,016,249 treatment observations as well as frequently recorded medication information, and clinical outcomes (e.g., hospitalization and mortality). Several regional differences can be observed using these data, such as age, treatment modality, and treatment time.CONCLUSIONCreating a robust multinational dialysis database offers vast opportunities to conduct real-world research and data analytics, including the development of artificial intelligence models. These activities hold promise of advancing the understanding of kidney disease and dialysis therapies. It can serve as comparative resource for the nephrology community.INTRODUCTIONLarge amounts of data are captured during dialysis, yet multinational datasets are scarce because of challenges in harmonizing and integrating clinical data, as well as complying with data protection regulations across the world. A global kidney care provider, Fresenius Medical Care, approached this challenge and finalized the creation of an anonymized dialysis database, coined ApolloDialDb (Apollo). We report on the approach used for database creation and detail dialysis patient characteristics globally.METHODSTo create this globally distributed multinational database, data from different electronic clinical systems were extracted, covering routinely collected medical information from dialysis clinics worldwide. This data were harmonized, and then anonymized following a reidentification risk assessment conducted by the external company Privacy Analytics, Ontario, Canada. The data was consolidated and is stored in a central cloud environment and will be updated periodically.