Leading US healthcare organisations rally to form Covid-19 collaboration body
A number of US organisations have banded together to form the Covid-19 Healthcare Coalition, helping to support those working on the frontline battling the virus
The Coalition comprises the Mayo Clinic, Leavitt Partners and several Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty leaders, as well as Arcadia.io, athenahealth, Amazon Web Services, Buoy Health, CommonWell Health Alliance, Epic, HCA Healthcare, Intermountain Healthcare, LabCorp, MassChallenge, Microsoft, MITRE, nference, Rush University System for Health, Salesforce and University of California Healthcare System.
By coming together, these organisations each bring their unique assets to the table, providing a unified response to the Covid-19 pandemic and serve as an independent party to facilitate communication, aggregate de-identified data – from clinical insights to resource requirements like beds and ventilators – and co-ordinate the response across a range of organisations.
“Applying real-time data analytics and best practice guidance to a pandemic can flatten the curve of infection and change its course, as seen with Ebola and H1N1,” said Dr Jay Schnitzer, MITRE’s Chief Technology and Medical Officer. “The business and research communities have mobilised to address Covid-19 and give this data analysis to the healthcare system leaders and public health officials to make evidence-based decisions that can save lives.”
The newly formed coalition’s core principles are:
- Everyone participates for the benefit of the country only — no preferential advantage to any one organisation.
- Everyone co-operates and openly shares their plans.
- Nobody will get paid for coalition work — without exception. Everyone brings their own resources — no money is exchanged.
- Verbal agreements will suffice to get us started.
- Agree to these terms and conditions and you are in.
“The power of convening enables collaboration in ways that ensure the whole is greater than the sum of their parts,” commented Dr John Halamka, President of Mayo Clinic Platform. “In the past 24 hours I've seen the best of humanity coming from the coalition.”