Healthcare technology company Cerner and Amazon Web Services are joining to offer access to de-identified patient data to researchers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHY IT MATTERS
Stored on Cerner's HealtheDataLab platform, which is hosted on AWS, the de-identified patient data will offer healthcare researchers a slew of COVID-19-related demographics to help track the spread and surge.

The data sets will also include lab results, underlying illnesses and chronic conditions, and clinical complications, among other statistics. An advisory committee will choose recipients of the free offer.

By combining and utilizing different types of clinical, patient, social determinant and other open source data, researchers can build intelligent models, which could in theory anticipate patient outcomes or help improve predictive analytics.

THE LARGER TREND
Cerner recently joined the list of multiple healthcare consortiums and technology companies that are collaborating on EHR-powered COVID-19 databases using de-identified patient data.

Meanwhile, Cleveland Clinic also announced it would dive into the EHRs of COVID-19 patients and use analytics to expedite research to find optimal treatment approaches, with the hope of uncovering the scientific mechanisms of how SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens cause disease.

The current Cerner project builds off of experience the company gained piloting a program with Duke Clinical Research Institute that automated data collection from multiple sources, including EHRs.

Cerner has released an array of platforms and services to healthcare professionals as the virus has spread, including the development of a COVID-19 update to Cerner Millennium to help health systems actively manage the ongoing threat of the virus in communities.

The company is also supporting hospitals and health systems worldwide as they establish field hospitals in places such as parking lots, hotels and previously closed health facilities. For instance, Cerner was recently tapped by the UK’s National Health Service to supply its Millennium EHR system for a 4,000-bed temporary hospital in London.

ON THE RECORD
"The current COVID-19 pandemic compelled our team to develop a strategy to help leading health systems advance the search for critical solutions," said Cerner President Donald Trigg in a statement. "When we ultimately move from crisis response to recovery, I am hopeful it will also demonstrate the promise of a 'learning health network' to accelerate the next generation of discovery."

"By supporting complimentary access to Cerner HealtheDataLab there is an opportunity to bring health systems, academic medical centers and technology efforts together to securely share information and approaches to better understand, combat and contain COVID-19," added Dr. Shez Partovi, director of worldwide business development for healthcare, life sciences and genomics at AWS.