Mayo Clinic researchers examined Google Trends search terms amid the pandemic and found the keywords related to COVID-19 correlated with outbreaks across the U.S.

Hospital and intensive care unit beds are at risk of reaching capacity within the next three weeks, according to an Oct. 20 data report from the University of Texas at Austin.

Massachusetts is updating the way it collects and presents COVID-19 data, Gov. Charlie Baker said during a news conference this week.

Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital tapped IT software and services provider BMC to automate reporting among the 51 Florida hospitals participating in the statewide COVID-19 data exchange. 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services is pausing reporting of new COVID-19 case totals until Oct. 20 while its computer system gets updated, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

The Office on Women's Health, a division of HHS, has inked an $8 million deal with healthcare improvement company Premier to establish a maternal health data network of at least 200 hospitals.

Connecticut is set to roll out its statewide health information exchange this fall after years of setbacks and faulty launches, Hartford Business Journal reported.

DJ Patil, PhD, the nation's first chief data scientist from 2015 through 2017, learned important lessons about data after he left his post as the head of technology at Devoted Health this spring to help California with its COVID-19 response.

South Dakota's state COVID-19 dashboard inaccurately reported hospital bed availability, stating some hospitals were at capacity when they weren't for a few hours earlier this week until the error was noticed and fixed, according to a report in the Argus Leader.

Recently published results on the performance of two predictive analytics models developed during New York City's spring COVID-19 wave show the tools have potential to help address the winter's anticipated wave of cases, but still need fine-tuning to estimate a patient's complete trajectory.

A Florida legislator warned his colleagues against using the state's COVID-19 death rate data to make public policy decisions after an analysis found compromised data and an inflated death rate, according to a Fox 35 Orlando report.

Contact tracing is an important tool public health leaders and government officials use to understand how COVID-19 is spreading across the country, even though many of these efforts have experienced significant challenges when it comes to issues such as data privacy, interoperability and accuracy.

Multiple COVID-19 outbreaks in schools, workplaces and prisons across Illinois have not been made public, according to a report in USA Today.

The American Hospital Association predicts non-federal hospitals will lose more than $323 billion in 2020 due to pandemic-induced revenue losses. Many hospitals are beginning to recover, but still struggle to bring back patients who are wary of returning to healthcare facilities amid the pandemic.

The Florida health department delayed reporting COVID-19 cases and deaths on Oct. 10 after receiving thousands of previously unreported tests.

The Missouri health department said it delayed updating its COVID-19 dashboard on Oct. 11 due to a data extract error.

The Colorado Hospital Association signed agreements with hospitals it represents to keep daily bed capacity and ICU bed counts confidential, according to a report from KOAA, a local NBC affiliate.

The Arizona health department reported an unnamed large healthcare provider skewed its COVID-19 data by inaccurately reporting hospitalizations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the importance of robust data analytics and reporting efforts for health systems. 

The goal of healthcare analytics software is to provide both a clear picture of hospital and physician performance and a foundation for data-based decision-making. Performance improvement, readmissions or cost reduction, finding mutually beneficial partnerships — these can all be uncovered with the use of the proper data analytics tool. Data vendors all have their own unique selling points, but there are a few key differentiators that affect reliability of the data and depths of insights you can obtain.