The initiative captures information on patients diagnosed with respiratory illness or SARS-CoV-2, providing details on demographics, comorbidity and treatment. Data is collected from 40 sites participating in PCORnet, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network.
objectives
- Develop partnership between CDC, PCORnet and PHII for COVID-19 surveillance using data from electronic health records
- Maintain and update a filtered common data model of patients with respiratory illnesses and SARS-CoV-2 testing every two weeks
- Respond to queries every two weeks to assess patients with COVID-19 diagnoses, influenza diagnoses and SARS-CoV-2 testing
- Respond to advanced analytic queries focused on predictors of admission/readmission, disease severity and COVID-19 sequelae
key partners and roles
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) serves as the project sponsor.
- PHII, a program of the Task Force for Global Health, provides project management, contract management and communications support.
- Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) serves as the data coordinating center and leads development, execution and generation of surveillance queries. HPHC also captures data for advanced analytics.
- Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI) provides strategic direction and support for the initiative and contributes data for surveillance queries.
Impact
- This initiative has been a unique partnership that has supported efforts within CDC and the federal government to respond to the pandemic and has led to published manuscripts and presentations, all while serving as the catalyst for other related projects exploring COVID-19.
- More on the impact of this project can be viewed within the impact statement.
Resources
The project management team distributes bi-monthly newsletters to share regular updates on project activities, outcomes and events. (Note that in 2024, the newsletter frequency changed to quarterly instead of bi-monthly.)
The February 2024 webinar features updates on queries and schedule, COVID and Full CDM comparison, patient-level data analysis plans, flu query results, chronic disease control trend analysis, initial glimpse of risk factors for death/hospitalization among patients 75+ years, and manuscript updates.
The May 2023 webinar began with a brief update on Harvard Pilgram’s cybersecurity incident. The group then discussed updates regarding query efficiency, query reporting and timelines, the new surveillance query and the incident diseases query. The call closed with an update on plans for Year 4 of the project and updates on manuscripts.
The February webinar began with CDC’s thanks and appreciation for this partnership. The team discussed results from the PASC query, cumulative query and disease severity query. The group was also updated on queries planned through April 2023. The first patient-level data pull will be released soon with responses due by the end of February.
The November webinar began with a welcome that highlighted how PCORnet data have been used previously and the potential questions the data can answer in the future. This was a perfect segue into the official launch of the impact statement, a recommendation from prior webinars. This resource highlights the impact PCORnet data have had on understanding COVID-19 epidemiology and informing public health policy and action to help manage the pandemic. Please feel free to distribute this resource widely. Other topics of discussion included 2022’s remaining queries and potential query topics for 2023. Attendees were also given a first look at the updated COVID-19 surveillance data, and findings and trends from the first Monkeypox assessment.
The August webinar included potential topics for Year 3 queries, preliminary data on therapeutics and Monkeypox additions to the next cumulative query. All sites should have received their contract for this funding cycle, which began on August 1, 2022. Additionally, the PCORnet team discussed the creation of an impact statement, a recommendation from prior webinars, that will describe how data from this project has been used beyond publications and will share with sites once it is available.
The June webinar provided a high-level overview of work completed to date, past queries, future cumulative queries and some key outcomes, including some newly released tables displaying sequelae severity among different age groups across the PCORnet sites. Additionally, the webinar included logistical updates as Year 2 closes and Year 3 begins along with potential topics for queries in Year 3.
The May webinar provided a high-level overview of work completed to date, past queries, future cumulative queries and some key outcomes. The webinar also looked forward to expected funding for Year 3 and the continuing engagement of PCORnet sites.
The February webinar covered future long COVID and Delta-focused query updates, as well as news on both published and potential papers and what to expect for upcoming project activities and timeline.
The December webinar covered updates on the long COVID, immunization, death and disease severity queries. Additional topics include an update on the short-term approach for patient-level data, potential queries for 2022 and an update on the progress of manuscripts submitted for publication.
October’s webinar presented data on recent queries and plans for future queries being developed.
August bi-monthly webinar (August 23, 2021): The August webinar provided an update on query results, the query timeline for the remainder of 2021, details on the vaccine- and delta-focused queries, and progress on manuscripts in development.
June’s webinar provided an update on current and future queries, manuscripts and other publications under developement and details for the scope for the second year of the project.
*Note: The June webinar recording and transcript contain data that have not been shared publicly. Once that data has been made public, the webinar and transcript will be made available.
The third bi-monthly webinar provided an overview of the project’s accomplishments, a status update on continuation funding, and plans for future queries and disseminating results.
The project team hosted its second bi-monthly webinar to update partners on recent query data, share plans for future queries being developed and discuss dissemination methods to communicate query results.
The project team hosted a webinar to share details on the project objectives and timeline, as well as to introduce key partners and roles.
Query schedule
Queries will be sent to sites once to twice a month. A tentative schedule is provided below.
- December 2022: Cumulative query
- Mid-January 2023: Stroke and mRNA bivalent vaccine query
- Over the last year, the PCORnet CDC COVID-19 Healthcare Data Initiative has been leveraged to retrieve data from electronic health records and gain insight into topics of interest by CDC and other federal partners. To learn more about this specific topic please see the CDC and FDA statement.
- Early February 2023: Mortality query with patient-level data pull
- Mid-February 2023: Preventive services query
- Early-March 2023: Incident chronic diseases query
- Mid-March 2023: Chronic disease control query
