BeyondHIE Collaboration to Study Long COVID for the CDC


“This work is critically important to further understand and control this devastating virus that has impacted millions of lives,” says Brian Chin, UHIN’s chief executive officer.

A collaboration of BeyondHIE members and partners has recently been awarded a grant by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to track the burden, distribution, and impact of post COVID-19 conditions. The work focuses on diverse populations of children, adolescents and adults in Utah, New York City and the Bronx. Two founding members of BeyondHIE, Comagine Health and the Utah Health Information Network (UHIN), came together to pursue this work with BeyondHIE partners the Bronx Regional Health Information Organization (Bronx RHIO), Boise State University (BSU) and findhelp.

BeyondHIE believes in the strength of collaboration and that partnership allows healthcare communities to realize economies of scale to lower the costs of data exchange and connectivity. BeyondHIE is proud to see this vision recognized by the CDC, the United States’ health protection agency, through the granting of this important work.

For this project, the data solutions team at Comagine Health will use clinical data from two health information exchanges (HIEs), UHIN and Bronx RHIO, augmented with social determinants of health data from findhelp to identify, track, and analyze the long-term impact of COVID-19 on patients after their diagnoses.

“Data from Bronx RHIO will provide critical insight into the long-term impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable groups, in particular racially and ethnically diverse groups with disproportionate high burden of co-morbid conditions and low socioeconomic status,” says Terry Mahotière, Clinical Director, Compliance & Privacy Officer of Bronx RHIO.

As a part of this collaborative effort, the principal investigator and co-investigators from Boise State University will contribute their expertise in surveillance and developing and running cohort studies. BeyondHIE will coordinate with BronxRHIO and UHIN around HIE data collection and aggregation.

“This work is critically important to further understand and control this devastating virus that has impacted millions of lives,” says Brian Chin, UHIN’s chief executive officer.

“The impact of COVID-19 on populations across the country is especially important for us to understand over time,” adds Joshua Slen, BeyondHIE’s president and chief executive officer. “We are committed to bringing data to support sound decision making and this exciting long-term study will help to demonstrate the promise of HIE’s collaborating to improve health outcomes.”

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About BeyondHIE

BeyondHIE is a partnership of premier Health Care companies with extensive expertise in health information exchange (HIE), point of service clinical information message delivery, quality measurement, outcomes reporting, and clinical process improvement. BeyondHIE supports governments by combining clinical, claims, and SDOH information to support decision making. BeyondHIE positions itself as the premier trading partner with major Public and Private payers to improve quality of health outcomes and reduce costs of care. By helping HIEs to accomplish goals across geographies and populations, BeyondHIE delivers new and exciting opportunities for health surveillance, data quality, and health system performance.

About Comagine Health, BeyondHIE founding partner

Comagine Health works collaboratively with patients, providers, payers and other stakeholders to reimagine, redesign and implement sustainable improvements in the health care system. As a trusted, neutral party, we work in our communities to address key, complex health and health care delivery problems. In all our engagements and initiatives, we draw upon our expertise in quality improvement, care management, health information technology, analytics, and research. We invite our partners and communities to work with us to improve health and redesign the health care delivery system.

About UHIN, BeyondHIE founding partner

For nearly 30 years, UHIN has been a fixture of the Utah healthcare community. We were created by the community because they saw the need for a central, neutral organization that could bring people together around electronic data exchange. UHIN serves healthcare providers, payers, ACOs, government entities, billing services, and other healthcare partners who need data, tools and expertise, and reduced data costs to support the healthcare community.

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