Abstract
In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and National Security Council (NSC) formed the COVID-19 Insights Partnership. Initially suggested by the VA Office of Research and Development, the partnership represents a major milestone in cooperation among U.S. federal agencies to advance public health. The goal is to establish a secure computing enclave at the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where datasets from multiple federal agencies can be brought together and combined for public health research purposes. With appropriate regulation, data governance, and data access policies in place, qualifying investigators from multiple federal agencies will be able to combine the DOE’s high-performance computing and artificial intelligence expertise with national longitudinal electronic health record data from veterans as well as health data from nonveterans diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).1–5 This research will bolster the nation’s ability to understand, prevent, and treat COVID-19 and will better position the nation to respond to future public health emergencies.
