Health Services Research Colloquium

Introducing N3C -The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) - A National Partnership to Fight COVID-19

During public health emergencies like COVID-19, science - and the process of turning observations into new therapies - must be translated faster than ever. Vast amounts of clinical data are being generated that could be used to advance research efforts focused on COVID-19. These datasets often become too large to share and the networks for data management are so dissimilar that they cannot be combined easily, creating roadblocks along the path to developing new treatments. With no standardized way to collect and harmonize all this data being generated, there is an urgent need for a COVID-19 analytics platform that can turn all this data into new knowledge that can speed research efforts across the country. Making data more meaningful, open and accessible is a key goal in NCATS' efforts to improve translational science and advance research across many diseases.

An effort called the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, or N3C, is building a centralized national data resource - the NCATS N3C Data Enclave - that the research community can use to study COVID-19 and identify potential treatments as the pandemic continues to evolve. Specifically, the N3C will enable the rapid collection and analysis of clinical, laboratory and diagnostic data from hospitals and health care plans. If successful, this approach will be applicable to other research questions and may serve as a model for addressing future public health emergencies.

The N3C is a partnership among the NCATS-supported Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program hubs and the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H), with overall stewardship by NCATS. Collaborators will contribute and use COVID-19 clinical data to answer critical research questions to address the pandemic.

The colloquium is co-sponsored by the Center for Health Care and Policy Research and the Department of Health Policy and Administration.