Predicting Patient Outcomes in Wisconsin and Nationwide Using the University of Wisconsin’s COVID-19 EHR Cohort Database

At a Glance

Dr. Michael Fiore, professor of medicine and UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI) director, and researchers at UW-CTRI are using a $300,000 COVID-19 Response Grant from the Wisconsin Partnership Program to better understand the course, treatments and outcomes of COVID-19 and provide insights to improve the monitoring and treatment of future novel disease outbreaks. UW-CTRI has been leading the COVID Electronic Health Records (EHR) Cohort at the University of Wisconsin (CEC-UW). CEC-UW is using de-identified EHR data from COVID-19 patients across 21 participating health systems across the country, enabling the project to link demographic, medical history, and clinical data to COVID-19 severity and outcomes. A grant from the Wisconsin Partnership Program supports the analysis of data, including the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 among racial and ethnic minorities and vulnerable populations, comparing Wisconsin to the rest of the nation, including African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and patients diagnosed with depression and anxiety.

The Challenge

There is substantial evidence that certain populations of COVID patients including elderly, Black, Hispanic, male, obese, smokers, and those with chronic renal failure, are at greater risk for experiencing adverse outcomes from COVID including death. Little is known about the disease patterns of COVID in the Wisconsin population. Additional research is needed to obtain accurate data specific to Wisconsin to target individuals at greatest risk, inform the treatment of future COVID patients, offer guidance for managing the evolution of variants, and provide insights to improve the monitoring and treatment of current COVID and future outbreaks in Wisconsin.