Photo of Dae Hyun Kim, MD at the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research in Boston, MA

Dae Hyun Kim, MD, MPH, ScD

  • Associate Scientist
  • Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
  • Attending Geriatrician, Division of Gerontology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
  • Adjunct Faculty, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  • Faculty

Dr. Kim is a geriatrician, researcher, and mentor. He believes we can provide better health care to older people by incorporating frailty into clinical care, research, and population health.

Toward this mission, Dr. Kim founded the Frailty Research Program at the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research. Funded by grants from the National Institute on Aging, Harvard Catalyst, Medical Foundation, and John A. Hartford Foundation, his research aims to enable clinicians and health care systems to deliver clinical care and population health management tailored to a person’s frailty level.

As a Beeson scholar, Dr. Kim developed a claims-based frailty index algorithm, which allows estimation of the frailty level from administrative claims data such as Medicare data. This algorithm is widely used by epidemiologists and health services researchers who want to measure frailty on a population scale. He is a member of the Project Advisory Task Force for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services for “Validating and Expanding Claims-Based Algorithms of Frailty and Functional Disability for Value-Based Care and Payment.” Dr. Kim’s current research uses this algorithm to evaluate the benefits and harms of drug therapies, surgical procedures, and care models by different levels of frailty.

To translate frailty into clinical practice, Dr. Kim has developed the Senior Health Calculator, an online frailty index calculator, which has been incorporated into the electronic medical records at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. As a result, frailty assessment is increasingly used for clinical decision-making and conversations about prognosis with patients and their family.  

As a geriatrician, Dr. Kim provides preoperative comprehensive geriatric assessment in medically complex patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement in the Senior Health Practice at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Dr. Kim has mentored nearly 30 people in their early career, including recipients of the National Institutes of Health career development awards. He teaches students and trainees at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Geriatrics Medicine Fellowship, and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He lectures on preoperative frailty assessment in the Harvard Annual Review of Geriatric Medicine course.

Dr. Kim is an associate editor of the Journals of Gerontology Medical Sciences and serves on the American Geriatrics Society Research Methods subcommittee and the editorial board of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

View a list of Dr. Kim's current and past grants and publications at Harvard Catalyst profile.

Research Areas

Learn more about the areas of research where Dr. Kim focuses.

A string of computer code is reflected in the glasses of a researcher at the Marcus Institute for Aging in Boston, MA.

Data Science and Technology

The Marcus Institute includes a biostatistics and data sciences faculty who collaborate with investigators to design and conduct clinical trials and observational studies in aging.

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A scene of a hospital floor at Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Boston, MA, with a nurse standing and working on a computer in the background and a blood pressure monitor in the foreground.

Health Care Services and Policy

The Marcus Institute seeks to effect change in policies that impact the care of older adults by identifying age-related conditions that have an outsized impact on health care utilization and costs, while developing interventions that mitigate the issues.

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A close-up shot at two hands holding a syringe that is inserted in a vial of medication.

Medication

Marcus Institute researchers are examining the relationship between medicine and adverse health outcomes such as falls, injuries, and treatment side effects among older people.

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A research subject at the Marcus Institute for Aging Research stands on a measuring platform with a computer read-out reflected on the wall behind.

Physical Health and Function

Through the Marcus Institute’s research we are learning how older adults can maintain independence and quality of life.

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Current Projects

View Dr. Kim's current projects. 

Prospective Monitoring of Newly Approved Cardiovascular Drugs in Older Adults with Frailty

This research aims to establish a prospective monitoring program in routine healthcare databases for older adults with frailty and identify predictors of benefit from newly marketed drugs for cardiovascular disease.

R01AG062713

Principal Investigator

Applications of Claims-Based Frailty Index to Advance Evidence for Frailty-Guided Decision-Making

This research aims to generate evidence needed for frailty-guided clinical care and
population health management by applying a claims-based frailty index to routine health care databases, including patients with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias.
NIH R01AG071809

Principal Investigator

Mid-Career Mentoring Award For Patient-Oriented Research in Frailty and Health Outcomes

This project aims to develop a mentoring program in frailty research for early-stage and new investigators; conduct high-quality research to determine heterogeneity of treatment effects by frailty for a broad range of medical and surgical interventions; and enhance PI’s new research skills, mentoring capacity, and leadership.

K24 AG073527

Principal Investigators

Detecting Frailty in Home Environments Through Non-Invasive Whole Room Body Heat Sensing in Older Adults

This research aims to develop a frailty identification algorithm based on heat sensing technology to allow measurement of frailty in the older persons’ living environment.

 

(P30AG073107)

Principal Investigators

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