"Identifying key questions and core data elements is at the heart of a new initiative launched by the Reagan-Udall Foundation and Friends of Cancer Research.

The COVID-19 Evidence Accelerator provides a venue for major data organizations, government and academic researchers, and health systems to gather and design queries that can be quickly turned around and their results shared.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, data scientists around the country have been engaged in an intense effort to capture real-world data and rapidly deploy data analytics to help answer key questions related to the management of COVID-19 patients,” the Foundation said in announcing the program. “While over time each of these individual efforts will likely develop into valuable insights, by banding together we can collectively accelerate and maximize the utility of this information in the near term.”

The group is developing a set of common data elements that can be uniformly embedded into data collection efforts to allow for rapid aggregation and analysis."

Read more about how the real world data is being leveraged amid the COVID-19 pandemic.