Transmission dynamics: Data sharing in the COVID-19 era

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic underscores the need for building and sustaining public health data infrastructure to support a rapid local, regional, national, and international response. Despite a historical context of public health crises, data sharing agreements and transactional standards do not uniformly exist between institutions which hamper a foundational infrastructure to meet data sharing and integration needs for the advancement of public health.

There is a growing need to apply population health knowledge with technological solutions to data transfer, integration, and reasoning, to improve health in a broader learning health system ecosystem. To achieve this, data must be combined from healthcare provider organizations, public health departments, and other settings. Public health entities are in a unique position to consume these data, however, most do not yet have the infrastructure required to integrate data sources and apply computable knowledge to combat this pandemic.

Herein, we describe lessons learned and a framework to address these needs, which focus on: (a) identifying and filling technology "gaps"; (b) pursuing collaborative design of data sharing requirements and transmission mechanisms; (c) facilitating cross-domain discussions involving legal and research compliance; and (d) establishing or participating in multi-institutional convening or coordinating activities.

While by no means a comprehensive evaluation of such issues, we envision that many of our experiences are universal. We hope those elucidated can serve as the catalyst for a robust community-wide dialogue on what steps can and should be taken to ensure that our regional and national health care systems can truly learn, in a rapid manner, so as to respond to this and future emergent public health crises.