COVID-19 Research Database Recognized by the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA for Accelerating Breakthrough Research

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The COVID-19 Research Database, a pro bono initiative led by numerous leading healthcare organizations, including Change Healthcare, Datavant, the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), Healthjump, Medidata (a Dassault Systèmes company), Mirador Analytics, Office Ally, PointClickCare, SAS, StataCorp, Snowflake, and Veradigm today announced that the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA has named the COVID-19 Research Database a recipient of the 2021 Innovations in Regulatory Science Award. The Award recognizes the Database's novel framework as a blueprint for collaboration to accelerate breakthrough research. In addition, the COVID-19 Research Database Consortium announced today that de-identified long-term care data provided by PointClickCare Technologies is now accessible to researchers, expanding the ability to understand the impact of COVID-19 on older populations.

As of December 2021, the Database has over 3,000 researchers registered and over 300 studies underway. Researchers come from over 400 unique institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), state governments, and all 30 of the top medical schools. Supported studies address the most important topics in COVID-19 research, ranging from optimal policy responses to the pandemic, to inequities in care utilization and outcomes, and how the pandemic has changed the provision of non-COVID-19 related services.

Due to these efforts, the COVID-19 Research Database has received a 2021 Innovations in Regulatory Science Award from the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, given each year to celebrate the leadership, scientific breakthroughs, and unwavering advocacy that safeguards America's public health. The Award recognizes the Database for providing a valuable resource for COVID-19 research, and in particular for creating a framework that can serve as a blueprint for future public-private collaboration, synergy, and productivity and benefit the regulatory community.

"I am deeply honored to accept this award on behalf of the COVID-19 Research Database," said Niall Brennan, President and CEO of the Health Care Cost Institute. "The Research Database is a unique coalition that has been privileged to help accelerate our country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are excited to continue building a data infrastructure that supports researchers to explore their ideas and deliver meaningful scientific innovation."

Further, de-identified data provided by PointClickCare and covering patients receiving long term post-acute care is now accessible to researchers as of December 1 and comprises both EHR clinical and claims records, containing billions of patient encounters from over 21,000 skilled nursing facilities, senior living communities, and home health agencies in the United States.

"Patients in long term post-acute care settings, many of whom are elderly, have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Making such data available to researchers will be instrumental in helping scientists understand and address that impact, and in enabling care providers to best support our most vulnerable populations," said Dr. Mark Cullen, former professor of Medicine at Stanford University and chair of the COVID-19 Research Database Scientific Steering Committee.

"We are thrilled to be working with the COVID-19 Research Database to make our de-identified data available to researchers," said Jeff Wessinger, VP & GM, Life Sciences at PointClickCare. "Contributing our data to the Research Database is a terrific opportunity to accelerate research, and in so doing ensure that older populations are represented in research aims and outcomes."

In 2021, the COVID-19 Research Database enabled valuable research and publications that provided insights into several of the most important questions of the pandemic, including but not limited to the following highlights:

• The Effects of School Reopenings on COVID-19 Hospitalizations
• Patient access to chronic medications during the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from a comprehensive dataset of US insurance claims
• The Impact of COVID-19 on the Use of Preventive Health Care
• Trends in Filled Naloxone Prescriptions Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States
• Racial Disparities in Ischemic Stroke Among Patients with COVID-19 in the United States
• Declines in contraceptive visits in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic

Several of the initiative's leaders and participants expressed the continued importance of the effort and the incredible momentum and opportunity for the Research Database:

"Change is committed to empowering researchers to answer the most important questions in healthcare responsibly and with scientific integrity. The COVID-19 Research Database and its underlying governance process provides a leading framework to accomplish this aim" — Tim Suther, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Data Solutions, of Change Healthcare

"As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, interrogating its influence on other dimensions of health becomes increasingly important. We are thrilled to support the growth of the Research Database as it continues to enable researchers to rapidly articulate this broad network of relationships, and serve as a technical and institutional model for health data use" — Martin Aboitiz, CEO of Healthjump

"The COVID-19 Research Database is successfully demonstrating the impact on critical research of an open data platform that can bridge disparate data and technology resources. We are proud to support the Research Database as it continues to grow and reshape the way critical research is performed." — Arnaub Chatterjee, Senior Vice President of Product at Acorn AI, the data sciences entity of Medidata Solutions

"As it continues to gain momentum, the COVID-19 Research Database offers the global research community an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate COVID-19 research. The initiative supports SAS' commitment to enhance the nation's data infrastructure and apply powerful analytics to better investigate the pandemic's impact on different populations, as well as other high-need areas of health." — Dr. Steve Kearney, Medical Director, SAS

"The COVID-19 Research Database is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between industry peers and competitors. Veradigm is proud to be a partner of the Consortium, and we are eager to see this framework become a blueprint for industry collaboration in the future." — Tom Langan, Chief Executive Officer, Veradigm

To learn more about the COVID-19 Research Database, please visit: https://covid19researchdatabase.org or inquire at [email protected]

SOURCE Datavant