Data capture and sharing in the COVID-19 pandemic: a cause for concern

Routine health care and research have been profoundly influenced by digital-health technologies. These technologies range from primary data collection in electronic health records (EHRs) and administrative claims to web-based artificial-intelligence-driven analyses. There has been increased use of such health technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic, driven in part by the availability of these data. In some cases, this has resulted in profound and potentially long-lasting positive effects on medical research and routine health-care delivery. In other cases, high profile shortcomings have been evident, potentially attenuating the effect of—or representing a decreased appetite for—digital-health transformation. In this Series paper, we provide an overview of how facets of health technologies in routinely collected medical data (including EHRs and digital data sharing) have been used for COVID-19 research and tracking, and how these technologies might influence future pandemics and health-care research. We explore the strengths and weaknesses of digital-health research during the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss how learnings from COVID-19 might translate into new approaches in a post-pandemic era.