Private Sector Coalition to Combat COVID-19 with Real-Time Data

March 25, 2020 - Private sector organizations have partnered to form the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, a collaborative effort that aims to provide real-time data analytics to help those on the front lines of the outbreak.

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Coalition members include Arcadia.io, athenahealth, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Buoy Health, CommonWell Health Alliance, Epic, HCA Healthcare, Intermountain Healthcare, LabCorp, Leavitt Partners, MassChallenge, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MITRE, nference, Rush University System for Health, Salesforce and University of California Healthcare System, as well as the nation’s leading experts on pandemics at the strategic, clinical, and operational levels.

Each COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition member will bring its own unique assets, share resources and plans, and work together to protect patients and support care delivery.

“Applying real-time data analytics and best practice guidance to a pandemic can flatten the curve of infection and change its course, as seen with Ebola and H1N1,” said Dr. Jay Schnitzer, MITRE’s chief technology and medical officer.

“The business and research communities have mobilized to address COVID-19 and give this data analysis to the healthcare system leaders and public health officials to make evidence-based decisions that can save lives.”

Mayo Clinic, Leavitt Partners, and several MIT faculty leaders were among the first to unite around this effort. These major players asked MITRE to help coordinate the private sector’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to serve as an independent party to facilitate communication and collect de-identified data.

This data could include information ranging from clinical insights to resource requirements, like beds and ventilators.

Organizations will use this data and real-time evidence to understand the effectiveness of community mitigation efforts through social distancing, and to identify people at risk of COVID-19 exposure who need diagnostic testing. The coalition will also leverage real-time data to inform decisions about healthcare delivery systems, with a focus on staff, space, and other resources.

The coalition has several guiding principles: First, that everyone participates for the benefit of the country only, with no preferential advantage to any one organization. Second, everyone must cooperate and share their plans. The principles also state that no one will get paid for coalition work, everyone will bring their own resources, and verbal agreements will suffice to start the collaboration.

With the global spread of COVID-19, healthcare organizations around the world are working to get ahead of the complex challenges this novel virus will bring. Responding to these challenges will require bold and vigilant action from all sectors of the industry.

This private sector coalition represents a comprehensive resource of data, expertise, capabilities, and insights. Leaders expect that the collaborative will complement the actions of federal, state, and local governments, many of which have sought innovative tools from the private sector to help control the spread of COVID-19.

The White House recently called for the nation’s tech experts to develop AI tools that can be applied to a new COVID-19 dataset. The dataset represents the most extensive machine-readable coronavirus literature available for data mining to date.

“Decisive action from America’s science and technology enterprise is critical to prevent, detect, treat, and develop solutions to COVID-19. The White House will continue to be a strong partner in this all hands-on-deck approach,” said Michael Kratsios, US Chief Technology Officer, the White House.

“We thank each institution for voluntarily lending its expertise and innovation to this collaborative effort, and call on the United States research community to put artificial intelligence technologies to work in answering key scientific questions about the novel coronavirus.”

This new private sector coalition will aim to accelerate solutions for healthcare providers and patients battling COVID-19.

"The power of convening enables collaboration in ways that ensure the whole is greater than the sum of their parts," said Dr. John Halamka, president of Mayo Clinic Platform. "In the past 24 hours I've seen the best of humanity coming from the coalition."