• We are pleased to announce that the manuscript for “Characterization of patients admitted with COVID-19 compared to influenza” has been submitted for peer review. Thank you to Ed Burn for leading this effort, and to our entire characterization team for all the work you put into this important study.
Besides submission for peer review, the manuscript has also been submitted to MedRxiv. Our manuscript on the safety profile of hydroxychloroquine, both alone and in combination with azithromycin, is currently posted on MedRxiv while it undergoes the peer-review process.
There are several standout aspects of this study. It is the first study of COVID-19 hospitalized patients across multiple institutions (Columbia, Stanford, the Veterans Health Administration, and the South Korean HIRA). It is the first paper that provides a summarization of all baseline medical conditions and medication usage of COVID-positive patients, and it is the first to compare hospitalized COVID-positive patients to those hospitalized with influenza (2014-19).
• The prediction models have now all been trained, and we are continuing the process of externally validating them across our data network. If any networks are willing to collaborate in these validations, Jenna Reps and Ross Williams have published a CodeToRun.R that consolidates all prediction protocols into one master run. Documentation related to the four study questions including protocol links can be found here. If you have COVID-19 patients, we hope you will file the protocols with your IRB and contribute to these analyses.
We are encouraged by results from the HIRA database, and we look forward to generating reliable evidence at scale with the assistance of our wide date network. If you have questions, please reach out to Kristin Kostka (kostka@ohdsi.org).
• Our hydroxychloroquine study was profiled in a recent article by Science Magazine: “Antimalarials widely used against COVID-19 heighten risk of cardiac arrest. How can doctors minimize the danger?”
Please remember to visit our COVID-19 Updates Page regularly to keep on top of OHDSI work in this area.