Use of Electronic Health Records to Support a Public Health Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States: A Perspective from Fifteen Academic Medical Centers

Our goal is to summarize the collective experience of fifteen organizations in dealing with uncoordinated efforts that result in unnecessary delays in understanding, predicting, preparing for, containing, and mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA Response efforts involve the collection and analysis of data corresponding to healthcare organizations, public health departments, socioeconomic indicators, as well as additional signals collected directly from individuals and communities We focused on Electronic Health Records (EHRs) data, since EHRs can be leveraged and scaled to improve clinical care, research, and to inform public health decision-making We outline the current challenges in the data ecosystem and the technology infrastructure that are relevant to COVID-19, as witnessed in our fifteen institutions The infrastructure includes registries and clinical data networks to support population-level analyses We propose a specific set of strategic next steps to increase interoperability, overall organization and efficiencies