Arrow Senior Living has partnered with Arizona State University’s data science program for four years to address operational inefficiencies through student-built business intelligence platforms, according to CEO Stephanie Harris in an interview published September 21 by Senior Housing News. The St. Louis-area operator has hired one graduate student and employed three interns from Professor Jeffrey Baum’s program, all of whom have since moved to other senior living operators or technology vendors. Insight Living, another operator pursuing a similar strategy, tracks more than 100,000 resident health data points through partnerships with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Stanford University to reduce vacancy rates by extending length of stay.
TL;DR: Arrow Senior Living’s four-year partnership with Arizona State University has produced student-built analytics platforms that identified medication over-prescription issues and improved prospect targeting, while Insight Living tracks 100,000+ resident health data points through research partnerships with Cedars-Sinai and Stanford.
Data Science Students Uncover Medication Distribution Bottleneck
Students from Baum’s program built data models in Arrow communities with complex physical plants and lower care delivery efficiency, Harris told Senior Housing News. One analysis revealed a physician group working with Arrow had heavily prescribed medications, which slowed distribution to residents. Another student completed a prospect data analysis that improved call center efficiency by identifying leads more likely to engage with communities, reducing cold calling.
“Had the operator not worked through his thesis, which was very different than where leadership would have started in tackling the problem, the team wouldn’t have gotten to a better outcome,” Harris said, according to the publication. The partnership elevated the team’s ability to process complex data streams versus single-source data mining approaches used previously.
Arrow has introduced Baum to other senior housing operators, several of which have hired from his program, according to Harris. Baum is working toward developing certificate courses specifically targeted to the senior living industry as a workforce pipeline.
Research Partnerships Track Gait, Sleep, Medication Intake
Insight Living’s partnerships with Stanford and Cedars-Sinai track resident sleep patterns, medication intake, food consumption, and gait to create individual profiles, according to President Bryan Ziebart. The operator uses these profiles to intervene in preventative health issues before residents require higher acuity care. Residents who maintain wellness stay in units and communities longer, reducing vacancy costs.
“All of the data that goes into the systems has to be accurate because it’s used in the backend, so there’s a higher level of expectation around compliance,” Ziebart told Senior Housing News. The data rigor creates internal cultural expectations that extend beyond the research partnerships.
Insight markets the Cedars-Sinai partnership to prospective residents and families as evidence of innovation focus, Ziebart said. The university affiliation carries brand weight with families evaluating communities. “To be able to say the operator is partnered with the university is very high bar—they protect their brand name very closely,” Ziebart said.
Business Intelligence Platforms Address Operational Efficiency Gaps
Baum’s students help senior living operators build business intelligence systems to make more granular operational decisions, addressing an industry-wide data gap. “There’s so much operators can do for operational efficiencies, for business model innovation, creating new revenue streams and for getting better wellness outcomes for the residents, which is a nice social good but it also translates into business value, too, because the better wellness outcomes, the longer length of stay and less vacancies,” Baum told the publication.
Harris continues to consult with Baum on Arrow’s technology stack to address data integrity challenges in senior living. The industry’s documentation-by-exception practices make consistent technology adoption difficult, according to Harris. The partnership has helped Arrow enrich data quality despite these structural constraints.
Operators seeking similar partnerships face challenges around reputation management for home care and operational visibility that accurate data systems can address. The connection between resident wellness tracking and family satisfaction scores creates a measurable link between research investments and occupancy outcomes.
Reading Between the Lines
Arrow’s medication distribution discovery offers a blueprint for agencies evaluating back-office processes that affect resident experience. The insight didn’t emerge from front-line staff observations or family complaints—it surfaced in prescription volume data that a business intelligence platform made visible. Operators focused on senior living occupancy strategies may overlook how internal process inefficiencies create friction that families interpret as quality-of-care issues during tours and early residence.
Insight’s framing of university partnerships as marketing assets reflects a shift in how research investments are positioned. The Cedars-Sinai affiliation functions less as an operational tool and more as a trust signal during the admissions process, similar to how operators have replaced stock photos with resident images to convey authenticity. Families evaluating communities increasingly expect evidence-based care claims backed by named institutional partnerships rather than generalized wellness messaging.
The four-year timeline suggests these partnerships require sustained commitment before producing actionable insights. Operators launching similar collaborations should structure agreements with milestones that produce interim deliverables—specific data models, targeted analyses—rather than waiting for transformational outcomes. The workforce pipeline benefit, with three of Arrow’s interns hired by other operators or vendors, indicates the industry’s broader talent challenge creates secondary value from academic partnerships beyond the hosting operator’s immediate operational gains.
