Cloud Database of COVID-19 Patient Data to Aid Pandemic Efforts

June 04, 2020 - Clinicians, informatics, and other biomedical researchers will partner with HHS to leverage medical records and turn patient data into effective COVID-19 treatments through a more secure cloud-based database, according to a recent press release.

Through the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, the institutions affiliated with the National Institutes of Health-supported Clinical and Translational Science Award Program will support the development of coronavirus treatments through extensive analysis of electronic health records (EHR), which could lessen or end the global pandemic.

Through machine learning and accelerated statistical analyses, the database will predict patient responses to antiviral or anti-inflammatory therapies, identify potential new drugs and treatments, and find other indicators, such as biomarkers, which can inform clinical decision making, the release said.

The cloud-based database is certified through the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), which provides standard assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services, the release stated.

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) will provide the database, which holds records from patients who have undergone coronavirus testing or are suspected of being infected.

NCATS is also overseeing the collaborative, the release noted. 

"There is no centralized health care data in the United States," Melissa Haendel, PhD, the collaborative lead investigator, national center for data to health director, an associate professor of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology in the OHSU School of Medicine, and translational data science director at Oregon State University, said in the release.

"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.” 

The National COVID Cohort Collaboration is part of a $25 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) award to the National Center for Data to Health. The center is based at Oregon Health & Science University’s Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute. 

Any individuals who are able to use the database will run algorithms on this first-of-its-kind, safe, and secure patient data set without seeing actual patient records.  The first sampling of EHR data was transferred to the database May 12, and more will be uploaded as additional partners join the effort, the release stated. 

"This effort demonstrates how the existing resources of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program hubs can be leveraged to quickly address public health emergencies," said Michael G. Kurilla, MD, PhD, division of clinical innovation director at NCATS. 

"The National COVID Cohort Collaborative represents a shared vision to make data more meaningful, open and accessible to the research community to study COVID-19 and help identify urgently needed treatments."

Since the introduction, 15 institutions that have agreed to contribute data. These institutions include Oregon Health & Science University, John Hopkins University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Tufts University, University of Massachusetts, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Maine Medical Center Research Institute, and Penn State.