The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage Powered by Datavant and Regenstrief Wins 2022 FedHealthIT Innovation Award
SAN FRANCISCO, May 24, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Datavant, the leader in helping organizations securely connect health data today announced that the National COVID Cohort Collaborative Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage (N3C PPRL), powered by Datavant technology and Regenstrief Institute’s Linkage Honest Broker services, has been recognized with a 2022 FedHealthIT Innovation Award.
The N3C is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). It offers researchers access to a centralized, secure national data repository of medical records from patients diagnosed with COVID-19 that can support research on emerging questions about COVID-19 vaccines, therapies, risk factors and health outcomes. N3C has created the largest national, publicly available patient-level dataset in US history. Running on Palantir Foundry, a secure FedRAMP-compliant scientific computing platform that enables collaborative team science, the N3C data enclave currently includes information representing more than 13 million people nationwide, including 5 million+ COVID-19-positive cases. N3C is an unprecedented effort with significant contributions from NCATS Clinical and Translational Award (CTSA) hubs and sites, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Networks for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) networks, and TriNetX sites that collectively contribute electronic health record data and viral variant sequence data.
Using Datavant’s privacy-first linking technology, combined with a Linkage Honest Broker data governance model provided by the Regenstrief Institute, N3C has been able to:
- Increase the accuracy of COVID-19 prevalence estimates through privacy-preserving data de-duplication,
- Enable data enrichment across a broad array of data types including viral variant sequence data, mortality data, imaging and pathology data from other NIH repositories, and CMS claims data,
- Enable discovery of shared cohorts with other COVID trials and non-COVID programs.
“We are excited to be a part of an outstanding team advancing the state-of-the-art in PPRL processes to securely integrate data and accelerate COVID-19 discovery,” said Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., Regenstrief Vice President for Data and Analytics and a Professor at Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Grannis is the scientific director and the domain expert for patient matching, a critical component of Linkage Honest Broker governance.
The 2022 FedHealthIT Innovation Award recognizes NCATS’ foresight and leadership in implementing the first large-scale, real-time, healthcare PPRL architecture within the federal government. These capabilities underpin N3C’s data strategy and ability to answer the increasingly complex questions related to COVID, including Long COVID.
“The N3C represents an unprecedented and innovative public-private-government partnership. The realization of national data linkage to support collaborative analytics would not be possible without Datavant’s key technology, and is foundational to the success of the N3C,” said Melissa Haendel, Ph.D., Marsico Chair in Data Science and Chief Research Informatics Officer at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and Principal Investigator for N3C.
“Privacy-preserving record linkages enable us to really learn from the experience and outcomes of every patient in a way that protects the individuals involved but allows researchers to examine and analyze treatment, multiple data sources, and outcomes in ways that protect the individual and enables advanced machine learning,” said Warren A. Kibbe, Ph.D., FACMI, Chief of Translational Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics and Chief Data Officer for the Duke Cancer Institute.
“We are very pleased to support the N3C initiative with our partners at Regenstrief. This amazing data resource offers hope in a time of fear and uncertainty,” said Travis May, Founder and President of Datavant. “Connecting health data helps researchers find cures and vaccines. A standing national health data infrastructure can help our nation’s healthcare system anticipate and respond even faster in the future.”
The FedHealthIT Innovation Awards and Networking Reception will be held in person on Tuesday, June 7, 2022, from 1:30-4:30 PM ET at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
To learn more about the N3C PPRL, visit https://covid.cd2h.org/PPRL
Datavant is a partner/collaborator of the N3C, which is funded by NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
About the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)
NCATS conducts and supports research on the science and operation of translation — the process by which interventions to improve health are developed and implemented — to allow more treatments to get to more patients more quickly. For more information about how NCATS helps shorten the journey from scientific observation to clinical intervention, visit https://ncats.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit https://www.nih.gov.
About Datavant
Datavant’s mission is to connect the world’s health data to improve patient outcomes. Datavant works to reduce the friction of data sharing across the healthcare industry by building technology that protects the privacy of patients while supporting the linkage of patient health records across datasets. Learn more about Datavant at www.datavant.com.
About the Regenstrief Institute
Founded in 1969 in Indianapolis, the Regenstrief Institute is a local, national and global leader dedicated to a world where better information empowers people to end disease and realize true health. A key research partner to Indiana University, Regenstrief and its research scientists are responsible for a growing number of major healthcare innovations and studies. Examples range from the development of global health information technology standards that enable the use and interoperability of electronic health records to improving patient-physician communications, to creating models of care that inform practice and improve the lives of patients around the globe.
Media Contacts:
John Erickson
Director of Public Relations, Regenstrief
jorerick@regenstrief.org
Emily Carlson
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
emily.carlson@nih.gov
Elenee Argentinis
Head of Marketing, Datavant
elenee@datavant.com
