4CE Consortium – Results of Phase 1 published

First results of the 4CE Consortium were successfully published today in Nature Digital Medicine. The manuscript with the title “International Electronic Health Record-Derived COVID-19 Clinical Course Profile: The 4CE Consortium” covers the consortium’s data collection process and findings on EHR data from 96 hospitals in the US, France, Italy, Germany, and Singapore. These hospitals contributed data to the consortium for a total of 27,927 COVID-19 cases and 187,802 performed laboratory values. The provision of a central repository for medical records, which in addition to rapid data acquisition also allows data analysis and visualization, has provided fascinating, albeit preliminary, clinical evidence of how the disease presents, develops and affects different organ systems in different categories of COVID-19 patients.
In phase 1 of the project, the focus was initially on the following data:

  • Total number of COVID-19 patients
  • Number of intensive care unit admissions and discharges
  • Seven-day average of new cases per 100,000 people by country
  • Daily death toll
  • Demographic breakdown of patients
  • Laboratory tests to assess cardiac, immune and kidney and liver function, measure red and white blood cell counts, inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein, as well as two proteins related to blood clotting (D-dimer) and cardiac muscle injury (troponin) 

In this phase, three locations of the MIRACUM consortium – Erlangen, Freiburg, Mannheim – have already been able to participate and provide data from their DIZ. They will also actively participate in the consortium in the next analysis phase that will also include more detailed clinical data from the patient´s ICU stay.
For further information please read the press release of the Havard Medical School.