Cerner Provides Access to De-Identified Patient Data for COVID-19 Research

Cerner Corporation, a global health care technology company, is offering select U.S. health systems and academic research centers complimentary access to critical de-identified COVID-19 patient data to help fight the pandemic. This offering will provide eligible health care researchers free access to Cerner’s COVID-19 data set to support epidemiological studies, clinical trials, and medical treatments related to COVID-19, in line with applicable laws and guidelines.

The de-identified patient data secured and stored on Cerner HealtheDataLab, powered by Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), will include COVID-19-related demographics to help track spread and surge, underlying illnesses and chronic conditions, treatments, lab results, and clinical complications and outcomes that could help drive important medical decisions. A committee including Cerner associates and industry advisors will review the applications and identify recipients that will benefit from the complimentary offering.

“Cerner believes deeply in the power of clinical data to advance global research,” said Donald Trigg, president, Cerner. “The current COVID-19 pandemic compelled our team to develop a strategy to help leading health systems advance the search for critical solutions. When we ultimately move from crisis response to recovery, I am hopeful it will also demonstrate the promise of a ‘learning heath network’ to accelerate the next generation of discovery.”

Cerner and AWS’ collaboration continues to focus on making health care better for patients and providers. Last year, Cerner worked to reduce re-admissions to hospitals leveraging de-identified data to help make early determinations of the cause of return hospitalizations using AWS services.

“This is a pivotal moment in time when having access to the right information at the right time can help save lives,” Shez Partovi, MD, director of Worldwide Business Development for Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Genomics, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “By supporting complimentary access to Cerner HealtheDataLab there is an opportunity to bring health systems, academic medical centers and technology efforts together to securely share information and approaches to better understand, combat and contain COVID-19.”

Prior to COVID-19, Cerner began working with research institutions to help clinicians more easily and efficiently gain health insights and guide care. Last year, Cerner announced the development of the Cerner Learning Health NetworkSM , piloting the program with Duke Clinical Research Institute. This work helps automate data collection from multiple sources, including the electronic health record (EHR), to rapidly give medical researchers secure and compliant access to important information that has the potential to transform patient care.

“This opportunity with Cerner is an important example of how access to open science benefits the needs of providers, patients and communities,” said Eric Peterson, MD, Duke Clinical Research Institute, strategic adviser, Cerner. “By harnessing the power of these data sets, researchers can quickly, securely and freely answer scientific questions about this pandemic.”

Amid COVID-19, Cerner has taken steps to enhance and introduce new technology offerings and recommendations to support health systems as they fight the pandemic, waive license fees for expansion of hospital beds, establish new dashboards designed to summarize and display trends, among other community support efforts globally. Cerner has also launched a dedicated resource site giving clients access to new and updated offerings.