The widespread COVID-19 infection rates, genetic diversity and high number of people vaccinated against COVID-19 makes the U.S. an ideal place to study the genetic evolution of the novel coronavirus. However, experts with firsthand genomic sequencing experience during the pandemic told MIT Technology Review the country's legal and infrastructural obstacles make it almost impossible to turn genomic surveillance data on coronavirus variants into insightful takeaways.

Citing privacy concerns, the University of Cincinnati recently walked back its plan to share students' private information with UCHealth to expedite the COVID-19 vaccination process, Fox 19 News reports. 

HHS tacked another six months onto its contract with TeleTracking technologies for the collection of COVID-19 hospital data, according to an April 6 news release.

The Government Accountability Office wants HHS and federal agencies to be more transparent about COVID-19 data on race, ethnicity and infections at nursing homes, according to a March 31 Politico report.

The U.S. joined 13 other nations in releasing a statement March 30 raising "concerns" with a recent report from the World Health Organization about the origins of COVID-19. 

Truveta, a new healthcare data analytics startup formed by 14 U.S. health systems, recently named Lisa Gurry as COO and Dave Heiner as chief policy officer and general counsel, according to a March 30 news release. 

The National Institutes of Health awarded UC hospitals, led by University of California Irvine, $500,000 to support the agency's health system collaborative that integrates data from thousands of COVID-19 patient medical records with disease research.

A data and safety monitoring board formed by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases made a rare move when it published a statement March 23 saying AstraZeneca's March 22 announcement that its COVID-19 vaccine was 79 percent effective was based on outdated data.

Mobility data derived from smartphones has been used to inform COVID-19 policies throughout the pandemic, but that data often fails to account for older Americans and people of color, two groups that face an increased vulnerability to COVID-19, according to research recently published in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.

Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare has embedded a risk calculator in its daily report of positive COVID-19 test results to determine which individuals are high risk and need to receive an antibody treatment, according to a March 17 news release.

Researchers from Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center used anonymized cell phone data to develop an index predicting the potential risk of COVID-19 transmission in various businesses, according to research published March 16 in npj Digital Medicine.

Matching death certificate data with front-line COVID-19 surveillance data can improve the accuracy of states' COVID-19 death reporting, The Wall Street Journal reported March 14.

HHS' inspector general has been interviewing CDC officials about how the agency can collect more complete COVID-19 data, Politico reported March 9.

The FDA issued its Data Modernization Action Plan, an eight-page document detailing its strategy to improve and expand its data infrastructure.

Change Healthcare and Amazon Web Services announced March 9 they are launching a new data science as a service offering that provides de-identified claims data integrated with social determinants of health for more robust data analytics and research on vulnerable patient populations. 

Frodtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network and Advocate Aurora Health are founding members of a new health equity collaboration in Wisconsin focused on alleviating social determinants of health challenges in patient care, according to a March 4 news release. 

Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the rate of burnout among physicians, who were already feeling bogged down by growing administrative workloads and additional challenges.

Moderna and IBM said they will explore using artificial intelligence, blockchain and hybrid cloud technologies, among others, to improve COVID-19 vaccine management, according to a March 4 news release.

International research groups Health Level Seven International and Observational Health Data Sciences Informatics will collaborate to improve data sharing and tracking. The collaboration will integrate HL7's interoperability resources with OHDSI's observational medical outcomes partnership to create a singular common model.

The American Medical Association, American Nurses Association and American Pharmacists Association on March 2 urged all healthcare professionals to improve their efforts to collect and report race and ethnicity data when administering COVID-19 vaccines.