Labcorp teams with CHOP; launches AI RWD

Labcorp is tying two businesses together at once: children’s diagnostic testing in hospitals and disease research built on patient data. (labcorp.com, prnewswire.com) On April 13, 2026, Labcorp and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said they would build a joint pipeline for pediatric tests in cancer, genetics, immune disorders and rare diseases, with the goal of moving discoveries to national availability faster. (labcorp.com, chop.edu) Children’s tests often need different reference ranges and disease markers than adult tests, because children’s biology changes with age and development. CHOP and Labcorp said the collaboration will focus on pediatric-specific diagnostics that account for those differences. (360dx.com, bizjournals.com) A day later, on April 14, 2026, Labcorp introduced an artificial-intelligence platform for real-world data, meaning information gathered from routine care rather than controlled clinical trials. The company said the first use case is Alzheimer’s disease research. (prnewswire.com, datavant.com) Labcorp said the platform was built with Amazon Web Services and Datavant, and uses “agentic” artificial intelligence to turn large clinical datasets into research-ready files in minutes instead of months of manual preparation. (prnewswire.com, finance.yahoo.com) The Alzheimer’s focus gives the launch a large target population. Labcorp said more than 7.2 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease and annual United States care costs exceed $380 billion. (prnewswire.com, finviz.com) Taken together, the two announcements show Labcorp pushing on both sides of laboratory medicine: creating more specialized tests for clinicians to order, and packaging the resulting data for drug developers and researchers. Labcorp reported $13.95 billion in 2025 revenue, with $10.88 billion from Diagnostics Laboratories and $3.10 billion from Biopharma Laboratory Services. (labcorp.com, stocktitan.net) That strategy has been visible in recent months. In its February 2026 results, Labcorp said growth was driven by its diagnostics and central laboratory businesses, and it described expansion of specialty testing and partnerships with health systems as priorities for 2026. (labcorp.com, prnewswire.com) The next test is execution: whether CHOP-originated pediatric assays can move into broad clinical use, and whether Labcorp’s new data platform can win Alzheimer’s research work from drugmakers and contract research groups. (360dx.com, datavant.com)