Minnesota Electronic Health Record Consortium COVID-19 Project Informing Pandemic Response Through Statewide Collaboration Using Observational Data

The authors developed a federated data network in March 2020 using electronic health record (EHR) data from 8 multispecialty health systems in Minnesota to track COVID-19 positivity rates by various demographic variables, including rurality, ethnicity, and language. This process demonstrated the ease and importance of developing similar syndromic surveillance systems using EHR data and identifying trends in rural health.