COVID-19 Research Database

The COVID-19 research database enables public health and policy researchers to use real-world data to better understand and combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The database is a pro-bono, cross-industry collaborative, composed of institutions donating technology service, healthcare expertise, and limited and de-identified data. The database is a public-private consortium organized by Datavant, Health Care Cost Institute, Medidata, Mirador Analytics, Veradigm, Change Healthcare, Snowflake and many others. Please refer to our the partners below for the full list.

Partners Include

Governance Advisory Group

The group consists of a representative from all contributing data sources and institutions. This group designed the governance structure for the database, ensuring that data is used in ways consistent with its intent and ensuring the highest level of security and patient protection.

Martin Aboitiz

Founder & CEO, Healthjump

Jamie Blackport

Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Mirador Analytics

Niall Brennan

President & Chief Executive Officer, Health Care Cost Institute

Arnaub Chatterjee

MHA, MPA, Senior Vice President, Product - Acorn AI, a Medidata company.

Todd Crosslin

Head of Healthcare & Life Sciences, Snowflake

John Danaher

MD, President of Clinical Solutions, Elsevier

Todd Gottula

President, CPO, and Co-Founder, Clarify Health Solutions

Connie Inguanti

Vice President, Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships, Symphony Health

Steve Kearney

PharmD, Medical Director, SAS

Jason LaBonte

PhD, Chief Strategy Officer, Datavant

Brian O'Neill

CEO, Office Ally

Stephanie Reisinger

MBA, Vice President & General Manager of Life Sciences, Veradigm

Patrick J. Sullivan

Senior Vice President, Integrated Analytics, North America Life

Tim Suther

Senior Vice President, Data Solutions, Change Healthcare

Strategic Advisory Group

The group consists of industry leaders and This group identifies ways to enhance the database’s impact on COVID-19 research, including identifying opportunities to collaborate with other initiatives.

Marc Berger

MD, Special Advisor for Real World Evidence to the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research

Donald M. Berwick

MD, MPP, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Esther Krofah

Executive Director, FasterCures, a Center of the Milken Institute

Carolyn Magill

MBA, CEO, Aetion

David J. Shulkin

MD, Former Secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, MD

Ed Simcox

Chief Strategy Officer at LifeOmic, Former HHS CTO

Lisa Simpson

M.B., B.Ch., M.P.H., FAAP, President and CEO, AcademyHealth

Michael Stebbins

PhD, President of Science Advisors, LLC

Ginger Zielinskie

CEO, Evergreen Strategic Advisors, MBA

Privacy Advisors

The group consists of expert statisticians, ensuring that all data in the database and proposed combinations of data sets are de-identified.

Patrick Baier

PhD, Scheuren Ruffner Consultants

Daniel Barth-Jones

PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Columbia

John Cook

PHD, Founder, Singular Value Consulting

Andrew Kopelman

J.D., Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel & Chief Privacy Counsel, Medidata

Brad Malin

PhD, Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Biostatistics, and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University

Colin Moffatt

PhD, MSc, MRes, Chief Data Scientist, Mirador Analytics

Patient Advocacy and Ethics Advisors

The group ensures that the voice of the patient and the patient experience is captured in proposals and that the database meets high ethical standards.

Donna R. Cryer

J.D., President & CEO of the Global Liver Institute

Deven McGraw

J.D., MPH, Chief Regulatory Officer, Ciitizen

Jan Oldenburg

Principal at Participatory Health Consulting

Andrew C. Wicks

Ruffin Professor of Business Administration, Director, Olsson Center for Applied Ethics

Scientific Steering Committee Members

The group reviews all submitted proposals for research to be conducted in the database, ensuring that studies are scientifically rigorous and of the standard to be accepted by peer reviewed publications.

Mark Cullen, Committee Chair

MD, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University Schoool of Medicine.

Julia Adler-Milstein

PhD, Director of the Center for Clinical Informatics & Improvement Research, UCSF

Tom Carton

PhD, MS, LPHI and REACHnet

C. Lee Cohen

MD MBA, a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospitals

Sherrine Eid

MPH, Global Lead, Epidemiology and RWE & Global Lead, COVID-19 Epi-response Team, SAS

Aaron Galaznik

MD, RWE Head of Research, Acorn.ai

Mina Hsiang

VP, Policy, Devoted Health

Louise Ivers

MD, Executive Director, Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health

Lee Kallenbach

PhD, MPH, Senior Clinical Consultant, Veradigm

Alan Kaul

PharmD, MBA, FCCP, DAAPM, President Medical Outcomes Management and Co-founder PRACnet

Abel Kho

MD, MS, FACMI, Director of the Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine

Gregory P. Licholai

MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, PRA

Joseph Menzin

PhD, Founder & CEO, BHE

Anna Milewski

Research Assistant, HCCI

Ariel Pakes

PhD, Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Julie Parsonnet

MD, Professor of Medicine and of Health Research & Policy at Stanford

Eric Perakslis

PhD, Rubenstein Fellow, Duke University

Jeremy Racine

Global AI Healthcare Principal & COVID-19 Global Scientific Advisory Team, SAS

Sally Rodriguez

MPH, Chief of Staff & Director of Products, HCCI

James Robins

MD, Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Charles Safran

MD, MS, FACMI, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School

Misha Segal

MBA, Managing Director, Berkeley Research Group

Robert Shafer

MD, Professor of Medicine (Infectious Disease), Stanford University School of Medicine

Nan Shao

PhD, Corporate VP, Biostatistics and Statistical Programming at Parexel

Pietro Tebaldi

PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Department of Economics

Lisa Wruck

PhD, MSPH, Director, Center for Predictive Medicine, Duke Clinical Research Institute

Omics Advisory Board

The group investigates ways to incorporate omics data and research into the database.

Bruce Church

Chief Math Officer, GNS Healthcare

Ramon Felciano

Chief Technology Officer and VP Strategy & Insights, Qiagen

Justin Kao

Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer, Helix

Dan Shiffman

VP, Data Science, Qiagen

Additional Project Advisors

Zach Henderson

Chief Commercial Officer, Glooko

Richard Jenkins

Chief Growth Officer, Aetion

Jason Martin

Corporate Vice President, Global Data Operations, Parexel

Richard Thomas

Strategic Advisory Board, Genstar Capital

How it Works

The database can be accessed by academic, scientific and medical researchers conducting real-world data studies related to COVID-19. Although researchers may come from any sector, only non-profit, non-commercial projects related to COVID-19 or pandemics will be considered. All results must be made publicly available, preferably through peer-reviewed publications. To get access, first register as a researcher on the homepage below. Once approved as a researcher, you will have access to the knowledge base to learn more about the datasets and tools available (including R, Python, and SAS), and you will be able to get more information about submitting a proposal. In your proposal, it is important that you specify which data sets you would like access to, as well as whether you are interested in record-level joins between data sets. Once submitted, study proposals will undergo privacy and governance review, as well as review by the Scientific Steering Committee. Each proposal will be evaluated on the basis of three criteria: (1) the proposal is aligned with the mission of the database, (2) the proposal is feasible, and (3) the individual submitting the proposal is qualified to answer the question proposed. Based on this evaluation, the Scientific Steering Committee will approve the request and researchers will be granted access to the database. Once your submission is approved, you’ll be able to install the database environment and start your analysis. While data cannot leave the environment, at the conclusion of your analysis, you may export the analytical report you will use to publish your findings.

Data

The database includes de-identified and limited datasets from medical and pharmacy claims data, electronic health record data, mortality data, and consumer data. This combination amounts to billions of records, including more than 300 million unique patients in claims data, more than 40 million unique patients in EMR data, and over 80% of U.S. mortality data. More information, including coverage, data dictionaries, and update frequency is available on our knowledge base for approved researchers.

For Researchers

Researchers are welcome to register to request access to the COVID-19 Research Database Knowledge Base and the ability to submit research proposals. Register with your organizational affiliation. Personal emails will not be accepted. Access can be granted only if you intend to conduct non-commercial, non-financial, non-legal-related research. Registration requires approval before access is granted. A decision is typically made within 1 business day. Once registration is complete, you'll have access to the full knowledge base to learn about the full submission process, the types of datasets accessable, the analytics tools availble and more.

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For Sources and Analytics Providers

If you are interested in contributing data, technology or expertise, please submit the form below and we will be in touch shortly.

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Submit research questions to our question bank:

We are now accepting researchers questions from the public to help guide & inspire our researchers. If you are a researcher who wishes to access the database to perform studies, please register using the form above.

Research Database Principles

How patient privacy is being protected

Protecting patient privacy is critical to the database's mission. Answering questions about COVID-19 requires that researchers have access to de-identified and limited patient-level data. The consortium has worked together closely to ensure that not only can this access be provided pro bono, but that it can be granted while complying with privacy laws, offering additional layers of protection for patient privacy beyond what those laws require, and ensuring the ethical use of patient data. The database consists of de-identifed and limited datasets, which are certified to be HIPAA-compliant prior to being contributed to the database. Only researchers with approved study proposals are provisioned access to any of the data in the database, and only to the data sets they need access to in order to conduct their studies. If a particular study calls for a new combination of data, the combined data set must be certified as adequately de-identified and compliant with HIPAA prior to being made available. The database has been built with technical, security, and administrative controls meeting or exceeding industry best practices. The database’s governance and privacy working group, composed of leading experts from academia and industry on health data and patient privacy, have reviewed the database design and structure and will continue to oversee the operation of the database on an ongoing basis.

Information regarding IRB approval

The COVID-19 Research Database was established with IRB approval and an exemption from patient consent due to the use of HIPAA de-identified data, HIPAA limited data or non-HIPAA-covered data, along with the strong governance measures in place to control access to all data. This exemption covers all research performed within the COVID-19 Research Database. Researchers are responsible for determining if the IRB exemption provided here is sufficient for their needs. We recommend that you check with your particular institution and/or your desired publication venue to determine if they require an IRB approval / exemption and, if so, send them the IRB approvals (access to documents provided upon approval as a non-commercial non-profit researcher registration).

Costs to use the database and funding availability

Ther data has been provided pro bono by participating institutions. There is no cost for approved researchers to use the database. There is no funding directly provided by the database sponsors, but we encourage you to seek funding to use the database to cover your other costs.

Types of research that are not permitted

All studies submitted to the COVID-19 Research Database will be screened to ensure compliance with EULA terms. Examples of studies that are NOT allowed are:

Commercially-sponsored research: Any study paid for, sponsored by, or conducted to serve a sponsor for a commercial application (e.g. feasibility study for a sponsored clinical trial, a health economics and outcome research study to gain favorable reimbursement with payers, outcomes study to show your facility is superior to others in the area, etc.).
Legal research: Any study to support a legal proceeding (e.g. lawsuit, criminal defense or prosecution, etc.).
Financial research: Any study to support investing, trading, mergers, acquisitions, divestments, or similar professional or personal finance activities.

We allow all studies that relate directly to COVID-19, and to the effects on population health that the COVID-19 pandemic has created. In your study submission, please explain the benefit of your study in understanding the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact.

Terms of use governing the database

All research is governed by the COVID-19 Research Database End User License Agreement that is required to register for access to the COVID-19 Research Database Knowledgebase and the data. All investigators and co-investigators on a project who seek to access the data will also be required to agree to that Agreement. The data may only be used for academic, medical and scientific research related to COVID-19, and may not leave the database environment.

Donating to fund studies

Please contact us directly at contact@covid19researchdatabase.org.

Statement of Ethics and Intent

You can view our Statement of Ethics and Intent here.

Join Our Mailing List

Contact

For further questions, please email contact@covid19researchdatabase.org