The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working with about 60 clinical institutions affiliated with the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program to support the analysis of electronic health records in a new cloud-based database.
The National COVID Cohort Collaborative is a nationwide initiative to turn data from the medical records of coronavirus patients into treatments and analyze the data with predictive tools. The FedRAMP-certified database will contain records of individuals who have undergone coronavirus testing or are suspected to be infected with the virus for researchers to run algorithms without exposing patient records. The database will also include synthetic data and machine learning solutions that can begin to answer key COVID-19 questions, such as treatment options.
“The coronavirus pandemic has spurred us to build, for the first time, a process for collecting and harmonizing electronic health records from many different institutions, storing it in one secure location, and making it available in a collaborative platform for use by diverse experts,” said lead investigator Melissa Haendel in a May 27 press release.
The collaborative is funded by a $25 million award to the National Institutes of Health and will be based out of Oregon Health and Science University’s Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute.
