LabCorp (NYSE: LH), a leading global life sciences company that is deeply integrated in guiding patient care, and Ciox Health, the leader in health information management for more than 30 years, announced an agreement to collaborate on a comprehensive U.S.-based COVID-19 patient data registry. This registry will house curated, HIPAA-compliant de-identified data sets to expedite clinical research and analyses related to COVID-19. This patient data registry is expected to enable researchers to better understand and characterize COVID-19 diagnoses and treatments and generate insights that will aid ongoing and future pandemic preparedness and prevention efforts.

LabCorp and Ciox Health’s Real Word Data division will work closely to expedite this first-of-its-kind patient data registry. LabCorp has performed approximately 500,000 tests since first making its COVID-19 test available March 5. The registry will leverage LabCorp’s deep scientific and research expertise and the unique, rapidly expanding de-identified datasets from its COVID-19 testing platform. To yield a more complete view of clinical paths and outcomes, this data set will be supplemented with additional longitudinal medical record data, compiled using the Ciox Health DataFit Platform™. The data sets will be compliantly and safely aggregated to rapidly construct research-grade clinical cohorts for a wide range of epidemiological, clinical and observational uses.

“Healthcare practitioners and researchers need dynamic and real-time insights about COVID-19 to address this health care crisis and develop better treatment options for patients,” said Lance Berberian, chief information and technology officer, LabCorp. “Combining life sciences and data sciences, including artificial intelligence and natural language processing, is the next frontier in the battle against the virus. We hope that this groundbreaking registry inspires more research and quickly results in improved outcomes for patients.”

Initially, LabCorp will analyze clinical de-identified data sets from its rapidly expanding diagnostic patient data sets. Once developed, there will be an opportunity to expand the capability to foster a data coalition that includes leading healthcare providers and other partners, such as state and federal public health organizations.

“Ciox can securely, safely and efficiently access and curate invaluable clinical data across the U.S. healthcare ecosystem for the fight against coronavirus in a way that is consistent with the highest standards of existing privacy rules and that does not distract front-line healthcare workers from caring for patients,” said Pete McCabe, CEO of Ciox Health. “A comprehensive data set will yield valuable insights and we are ready to support researchers and public health organizations to advance our collective understanding of this pandemic. We see this as only the beginning and are hopeful that, together, we and LabCorp will galvanize a public/private data sharing partnership to deepen our understanding of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases so we can plan for and manage these pandemics more effectively now and in the future.”

This data set will scale over the coming weeks and months to aggregate millions of data points relevant to the continued study of this mission-critical area of medicine and public health. These cohorts are expected to yield insights into possible host and environmental factors that drive susceptibility to, or protection from, the SARS-CoV-2 viral infection, along with risk factors associated with the severity of disease at presentation and associated outcomes based on interventions. A multitude of other questions about the disease course of COVID-19 in different people and how its trajectory may be altered may also be answered using this data set.

“The registry will enable researchers and clinicians to gain rapid insights from real-world data, with the ultimate goal of improving the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. This important work speaks directly to LabCorp’s mission to improve health and improve lives,” said Oren Cohen, M.D., chief medical officer of LabCorp’s Covance Drug Development business and Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “Agility is critical in our current situation. By design, this patient data registry will serve as a platform for meaningful and dynamic inquiry that can strengthen our defenses against the pandemic while it’s happening.”

Cohen serves as co-investigator of the patient data registry. Marcia Eisenberg, Ph.D., chief scientific officer at LabCorp Diagnostics, serves as the registry’s lead investigator. A scientific advisory committee is being formed, including experts in relevant scientific and medical disciplines, to guide the usage of the registry and support ongoing partnerships for research.