Vladimir Polony

Current Position

Title: Vice President, Platform Engineering Company: Atropos Health Location: San Rafael, CA (Northern California)

Professional Background

Vladimir Polony is a seasoned engineering leader and technical innovator specializing in healthcare software, medical informatics, and platform development. He is a co-inventor of the proprietary Temporal Query Language that powers Atropos Health's ACE (Advanced Cohort Engine) Data Platform, enabling fast, scalable, and expressive time-aware search of longitudinal patient records. His career spans over a decade of progressive leadership roles in both healthcare technology and broader software engineering domains, including experience at Stanford's premier biomedical research centers.

Polony joined Atropos Health in March 2021 as Director of Engineering, bringing deep expertise from his tenure as a senior research engineer at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. At Stanford, he was instrumental in developing and publishing the Advanced Cohort Engine framework, which demonstrated significant efficiency gains over traditional SQL approaches for electronic phenotyping and cohort extraction. His earlier career includes engineering leadership roles at Kyron (analyzing routine care medical records), Proximic (context extraction and NLP), E2open (supply chain software), and Rockwell Automation, demonstrating versatility across industries and technical depth spanning from embedded systems to distributed data platforms.

His research contributions focus on healthcare informatics, particularly methods for querying and analyzing longitudinal patient records at scale. He has published peer-reviewed work in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association and collaborated with Stanford's Clinical Informatics Consult Service on projects applying real-world evidence to clinical decision support.

Career Timeline

Education

• Master's Degree in Economics, Univerzita Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici (1997–2001)
• Part-time DPhil student, University of Oxford, NDORMS

Public Presence

Social Media

Note: Only publicly accessible profiles are documented. X/Twitter account shows minimal recent activity.

Published Writings

• "ACE: The Advanced Cohort Engine for Searching Longitudinal Patient Records" — Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Volume 28, Issue 7 (July 2021) [Co-author with Alison Callahan, José D Posada, Juan M Banda, Saurabh Gombar, and Nigam H Shah]
• "Profiling Off-Label Prescriptions in Cancer Treatment Using Social Health Networks" — JAMIA Open (2019) [Contributor]

Public Speaking

No public information found on major conference presentations or speaking engagements.

Communication Style

Tone: Technical, pragmatic, and evidence-driven with a focus on practical solutions to healthcare informatics challenges.

Recurring themes: Query languages and temporal data structures, real-world evidence applications, scalable electronic phenotyping, healthcare data interoperability, and efficiency gains in medical research infrastructure.

Notable positions: Polony's work demonstrates a strong conviction that specialized query languages (particularly temporal query approaches) are superior to generic SQL for healthcare analytics. This is evident in his ACE publication, which emphasized the dramatic efficiency gain (5 minutes vs. 2.5 hours for equivalent cohort definition) when using domain-specific temporal query language.

Polony communicates primarily through peer-reviewed publications rather than social media or public speaking. His published work reflects a methodical, empirically-focused approach: the ACE paper provides detailed technical specifications, performance benchmarks, and clinical use case validation. The tone is formal and academic rather than promotional—focused on explaining methodology and demonstrating measurable outcomes. His engagement appears concentrated in professional circles (Stanford research community, healthcare informatics journals) rather than public-facing channels. This pattern suggests a person who prioritizes technical depth and peer validation over personal brand development, consistent with a researcher-turned-engineering-leader profile.

Notable Achievements

• Co-inventor of the Temporal Query Language enabling Atropos Health's ACE Data Platform
• Co-author of "ACE: The Advanced Cohort Engine" publication in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (peer-reviewed, high-impact venue for medical informatics research)
• Senior Research Engineer at Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, contributing to Stanford's clinical informatics infrastructure
• Developed efficient electronic phenotyping and cohort extraction methods enabling sub-5-minute cohort definition (vs. traditional 2.5-hour SQL approaches)
• Engineering leadership across multiple sectors including healthcare, supply chain, and industrial automation

Key Relationships

• Co-author with Nigam H Shah and Alison Callahan at Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research
• Current leadership at Atropos Health (part of founding team's engineering leadership)
• Research collaboration with Stanford School of Medicine's Clinical Informatics Consult Service
• Professional association with healthcare informatics research community through JAMIA publications

Information Availability Assessment

Public Information Level: Medium

Polony maintains a relatively low public profile despite significant technical achievements. Most available information comes from:

• Peer-reviewed publications in academic journals (high quality, technical depth)
• Company announcements and organizational directories (limited but official)
• Professional profiles (LinkedIn, The Org, Crunchbase)
• Academic repositories and citations

Limited public information on:

• Personal blog or published op-eds
• Conference presentations or speaking engagements
• Social media activity (minimal X/Twitter presence)
• Media interviews or press commentary

This profile reflects a technically-oriented leader whose impact is documented primarily through research publications and engineering contributions rather than personal thought leadership channels.