HCA Healthcare announced that it has formed a consortium of prominent public and private research institutions to use HCA Healthcare’s data on COVID-19 hospital care to improve patient outcomes and public knowledge, according to a news release from the company.
The institutions will gain access to the data in a research program directed by the HCA Healthcare Research Institute (HRI).
HCA Healthcare said it created a COVID-19 patient registry at the outset of the pandemic that has since captured data from treating suspected and positive COVID-19 cases, including more than 110,000 patients who were admitted for inpatient care in 2020.
The COVID-19 Consortium of HCA Healthcare and Academia for Research GEneration (CHARGE) provides a framework for cooperation and coordination among all members to pose and test research questions, scrutinize and validate methods, and, most importantly, share and act on ideas. HCA said the group will use a technology platform, provided by DataFleets, that allows multiple collaborators to explore trends in a protected environment that obscures individually identifying information.
The institutions participating in the consortium include:
· HCA Healthcare / HCA Healthcare Research Institute / Sarah Cannon Research Institute
· Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
· Columbia University
· Duke University
· Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
· HOspital MEdicine Reengineering Network (HOMERuN), which includes University of California San Francisco, Baystate Medical Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital
· Johns Hopkins University
· Meharry Medical College
The consortium will start with retrospective studies in the short term, such as evaluating the efficacy and safety of treatments used for COVID-19, improving overall understanding of the root cause for clinical outcomes, and developing novel predictive models. The insights gained from this research may lead to future clinical trials, HCA said.
