Today, we are announcing another step in our effort to harness diverse streams of data to understand and respond to COVID-19. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has entered into an agreement with Aetion to collaborate on advanced analytical techniques to answer urgent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) research questions. The FDA and Aetion aim to answer questions about the use of diagnostics and medications in the pandemic, and risk factors for COVID-19-related complications in different patient populations.

The FDA said Tuesday it’s pairing up with the data company Aetion to research Covid-19 complications and what types of medicines virus patients are taking, which could help researchers learn more about which treatments are effective.

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it will launch a new research project focused on real-world evidence — data collected by insurance companies, in electronic health records, and in other places in medicine — to learn more about Covid-19, including how diagnostics and medications are being used in the pandemic and how best to design studies to test them.

The project is a collaboration with Aetion, a New York health tech startup that specializes in real-world evidence.