1

Secrets of COVID-19: A National Concern: A Webinar reflection

Mojdeh Amini

Healthcare Informatics

Dr. Barbra Berkovich

December 13, 2020

 2

Background

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H) and National

Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) initiated the National Covid-19 Cohort

Collaborative (N3C) to concentrate on analyzing clinical data of patients across different healthcare

centers to show the patterns of COVID-19 patients. The N3C could establish solutions to harmonize

secure data throughout many organizations and facilitate collaborative research with transparency

and reproducibility. Consequently, it may help identify specific treatments and care to reduce the

immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19 to save many lives.

This webinar provides information about the current functionality and efforts to characterize

the National Covid-19 cohort. Also, it is urging communities to collaborate and leverage health data.

It also presents mechanisms and best clinical practices in researching to improve COVID-19 patient

outcomes. We invite the community to leverage these data and work collaboratively together to

reveal mechanisms and best clinical practices to enhance COVID-19 patient outcomes and transform

how we perform research as a nation.

Webinar: ”The National Covid-19 Cohort Collaborative: Revealing the Secrets of COVID-19”

Date/Length: December 3, 2020,/One hour

Sponsored by: Palantir, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 2020

(HIMSS20) artificial intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning Circle

Webinar Host: Ian Hoffberg.

Speakers:

● Melissa A. Haendel, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Data to Health (CD2H) and the

Translational Data Science at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).

● Anita Walden, MS, Assistant Director of the CD2H at the OHSU

 3

● Christopher G Chute, MD, Professor of Health Informatics and Medicine, Public Health, and

Nursing, Chief Research Information Officer and Deputy Director, Institute for Clinical and

Translational Research at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

According to N3C (2020), the current pandemic of COVID-19 creates many challenging

questions and concerns that remain hard to answer. For example, about the main risk factors,

specific prognostic signs, and the best drugs to treat the infected people. In the United States,

CD2H and NCATS made a vital mission to respond to those and other questions. They

established a national, centralized, secure field for the clinical data of COVID-19 in partnership

with the distributed clinical data networks such as the National Patient-Centered Clinical

Research Network (PCORnet), Observational Health Data Sciences, and Informatics (OHDSI),

ACT Network. Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (ACT/i2b2), and TriNetX, a

global health research network. Cloud-based data networking helps machine learning and other

informatics methods for big data.

My note-taking process started when I received the confirmation of my registration. For

brainstorming and mind mapping, I read outlines and familiarize myself with the topic by

searching the organization website. I used keywords, abbreviations, snipping, and symbols to

make my notes quicker and brief and easy to recall the events. Google Docs helps track citations

and keep notes organized and accessible for future references. For keeping track of professional

contacts, emails are a helpful tool.

The main point and takeaways from this webinar were that I need to understand the

informatics and regulatory challenges of establishing a large-scale collection of centralized EHR

data. Also, we should be able to articulate the common data models used as source data for N3C

integration, and how they are harmonized in the project—the N3C data enclave both from a
 4

security and confidentially projection perspective and as a rich analytic environment. In addition

to that, to understand the scope of questions answerable with the N3C data and Machine

Learning methods. Regarding harmonizing data, the platform translates the different ways that

contributing hospitals store patient data into a single, common format to enable combined

Currently, 57 sites across the country have agreed to transfer diverse data from

individuals tested for COVID-19, including demographics, symptoms, laboratory test results,

procedures, medications, medical conditions, physical measurements, and more.

By marshalling the national reach of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program

network, N3C is ensuring that the data represent the diversity of the country so researchers can

understand and address geographic and population disparities during the pandemic.

Powerful analytics capabilities. The platform is built to enable machine-learning approaches and

rigorous statistical analyses to identify connections and patterns more quickly than can be done

through traditional methodologies. These advanced analytics approaches can lead to the

simultaneous exploration of multiple questions. However, the webinar was very relevant to my

current program, with more insight into big data.

I had an opportunity to ask a question about, how N3C can predict the data regarding

COVID-19 vaccination and harmonize the data in a national scale? It is too early to find

adequate data about the vaccination at this early stage. However, it is an important question and

that needs to be addressed. I did add this event to my CV with future follow-up, as this pandemic

is expected to continue. The quality of the meeting was high, and I did recommend it to my

friends and colleagues.

 5

References

COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). Community Engagement at CTSA Hubs During the COVID-19

Pandemic. (2020, December 02). Retrieved from

https://ncats.nih.gov/ctsa/projects/community-engagement-at-CTSA-hubs-during-the-COVID-

19-pandemic.

Dane. (2020, November 24). The National Covid-19 Cohort Collaborative: Revealing the Secrets of

COVID-19. https://www.himss.org/events/national-covid-19-cohort-collaborative-

revealing-secrets-covid-19.

National COVID Cohort Collaborative. (2020). Access the National COVID Cohort Collaborative

(N3C) Data Enclave. https://ncats.nih.gov/n3c