Public Health Imperative Drives Research Consortium’s Shift to Critical COVID-19 Tool

A consortium among Minnesota health-care providers, organizations, and the University of Minnesota designed to use electronic health record data for research and quality improvement quickly shifted into a vital surveillance tool in tracking the COVID-19 pandemic.
The University, Hennepin Healthcare – a CTSI hub partner – and 11 health organizations created the consortium in March 2020 to use EHR (electronic health record) data for chronic kidney disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. With the pandemic’s arrival, though, it became a public health imperative that the group use its data to monitor COVID statewide.
Since March 2020, the Minnesota EHR Consortium has conducted COVID syndromic surveillance along with vaccine-distribution and vaccine-effectiveness monitoring. The group’s statistics on COVID-19 testing, infections and hospitalizations aids the Minnesota Department of Health and health systems in improving their models to plan for infection surges and to appropriately allocate resources.
Reports identify COVID hotspots, assess testing and treatment capacity, and fill gaps in state data. They also identify any marked differences in testing results by race, language and neighborhood income, as well as asymptomatic COVID positive rates.
The EHR Consortium is vital to tracking COVID efforts of the state – and of the nation. As noted in a recent Politico article (Dec. 20, 2021), two years into the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control continues to struggle with data collection and relies on data from state health departments across the country.
What’s more, the group has achieved incredibly fast data-delivery turnaround times, as results are delivered from the prior week. The group has the capability to refresh its data daily in the future.
The Keys to Success
Central to the consortium’s successful collaboration is its decentralized structure based on a distributed data model in which each entity shares summary-level results but maintains control of its own data. Participation in the group is completely voluntary.
The Consortium also spent time and effort building trust among the group through face-to-face teleconference meetings and by gaining group consensus before taking on projects. Results are presented to all the participating organizations during weekly meetings, where each entity is afforded a voice and a forum for discussion.