Emory researchers joined with colleagues from 13 health-care systems across the United States to test a multi-institutional data harvesting (MIDH) method for longitudinal observation of medical imaging utilization and reporting to assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health in the U.S. In this first study, they looked at computed tomography pulmonary angiograms (CTPA) to assess both the volume of testing and positivity rates before and during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. They found fewer CTPA exams were performed during the early COVID-19 pandemic than during the pre-pandemic period (9806 vs. 12,106). However, the PE positivity rate was significantly higher (11.6 vs. 9.9%, p < 10−4) with an excess of 92 PE cases during the early COVID-19 outbreak, i.e., ~1.3 daily PE cases more than statistically expected. The results were consistent with other research studies on related conditions, confirming the value of MIDH as a research approach for trend analysis.
"Multi-institutional data harvesting can contribute value as an exploratory tool, aiming at a better understanding of pandemic-related effects on healthcare," says Aws Hamid, assistant professor of radiology and imaging sciences, who was responsible for data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation.
Even more importantly, the researchers say in npj Digital Medicine, “As our retrospective analysis actually demonstrated an increased observed prevalence of pulmonary embolism during the early COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, it may be speculated whether MIDH-based “real-time” longitudinal data monitoring might have provided early clinical insight into the possible association between COVID-19 and thromboembolic complications long before such association was established in the medical literature and whether this digital medicine approach may therefore be useful for clinically meaningful decision making when facing future healthcare challenges with significant uncertainties, such as future pandemics.”