Electronic health records are an important tool to address Long COVID questions
By studying the health records of over 60 million people who have received healthcare across the US, RECOVER researchers are expanding our understanding of Long COVID.
Electronic health records (EHRs) are an important data source for RECOVER research. Through partnerships with both the Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet®) and the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), RECOVER has access to the health records of over 60 million people who have received healthcare across the US. This collection of EHRs includes data from both adult and pediatric patients, as well as data from both people living with Long COVID and people who do not have lasting COVID symptoms.
“EHRs provide breadth and give us the ability to look at large groups of people,” said Charles Bailey, MD, PhD, co-principal investigator of the PCORnet® pediatric study. “And because EHRs provide a picture of people’s health over a long period of time, we’re able to understand how Long COVID behaves over that time.”
Because EHRs were readily available, RECOVER’s EHR studies were able to conduct analyses and draw conclusions soon after RECOVER began as the initiative’s observational studies recruited study participants. Now that the observational studies have closed enrollment and begun to publish findings, researchers from both study types are comparing notes and understanding how their findings align.
RECOVER’s EHR researchers have conducted analyses to recognize patterns in symptoms through computer programs called machine learning algorithms. These programs can quickly identify people who are likely to have Long COVID. In addition, researchers have completed many studies examining what Long COVID looks like in children and adults, the various presentations of Long COVID, and how different groups of people are impacted by the condition.
Like any type of research, EHR research does have some limitations. EHRs may not accurately reflect the entire population that is living with Long COVID, as EHRs include only people who are able to seek and access healthcare. In addition, EHRs may be incomplete or inaccurate, as information contained within the EHR depends on how doctors and healthcare teams use the EHR and how much information they enter into a patient’s record.
Despite these limitations, EHRs are valuable in helping RECOVER researchers answer certain questions. Researchers' current primary goals are:
- Better understanding who might be more likely to experience certain types of Long COVID.
- Studying specific medications as possible treatments for or ways to prevent Long COVID.
“We’re asking many of the same questions (as other parts of RECOVER),” Bailey said. “We’re just asking them by using a different set of tools.”
