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.
In June, the NIH launched the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, also known as N3C, as part of a $25 million NIH award to the National Center for Data to Health. More than 15 healthcare institutions have joined N3C, including Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University, Stony Brook (N.Y.) University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
UC Health centers will use the $500,000 grant to integrate the COVID-19 patient data its facilities have collected with the N3C database, making the case records available on a national scale. The UC Health centers participating are UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC San Francisco, UCLA and UC Biomedical, Research, Acceleration, Integration and Development.
N3C offers researchers who are looking for COVID-19-related studies quick access to case data including demographics, symptoms, medications, lab test results and outcomes. Most personal information is not included in the database, but patient ZIP codes and dates of service are.
The collaborative will continue to feed data into the system for the next five years to address both immediate and long-term questions about COVID-19.