Reduced Rate of Inpatient Hospital Admissions in 18 German University Hospitals During the COVID-19 Lockdown.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused strains on health systems worldwide disrupting routine hospital services for all non-COVID patients. Within this retrospective study, we analyzed inpatient hospital admissions across 18 German university hospitals during the 2020 lockdown period compared to 2018. Patients admitted to hospital between January 1 and May 31, 2020 and the corresponding periods in 2018 and 2019 were included in this study. Data derived from electronic health records were collected and analyzed using the data integration center infrastructure implemented in the university hospitals that are part of the four consortia funded by the German Medical Informatics Initiative. Admissions were grouped and counted by ICD 10 chapters and specific reasons for treatment at each site. Pooled aggregated data were centrally analyzed with descriptive statistics to compare absolute and relative differences between time periods of different years. The results illustrate how care process adoptions depended on the COVID-19 epidemiological situation and the criticality of the disease. Overall inpatient hospital admissions decreased by 35% in weeks 1 to 4 and by 30.3% in weeks 5 to 8 after the lockdown announcement compared to 2018. Even hospital admissions for critical care conditions such as malignant cancer treatments were reduced. We also noted a high reduction of emergency admissions such as myocardial infarction (38.7%), whereas the reduction in stroke admissions was smaller (19.6%). In contrast, we observed a considerable reduction in admissions for non-critical clinical situations, such as hysterectomies for benign tumors (78.8%) and hip replacements due to arthrosis (82.4%). In summary, our study shows that the university hospital admission rates in Germany were substantially reduced following the national COVID-19 lockdown. These included critical care or emergency conditions in which deferral is expected to impair clinical outcomes. Future studies are needed to delineate how appropriate medical care of critically ill patients can be maintained during a pandemic.

Rationale and Design of the Hamburg City Health Study.

The Hamburg City Health Study (HCHS) is a large, prospective, long-term, population-based cohort study and a unique research platform and network to obtain substantial knowledge about several important risk and prognostic factors in major chronic diseases. A random sample of 45,000 participants between 45 and 74 years of age from the general population of Hamburg, Germany, are taking part in an extensive baseline assessment at one dedicated study center. Participants undergo 13 validated and 5 novel examinations primarily targeting major organ system function and structures including extensive imaging examinations. The protocol includes validate self-reports via questionnaires regarding lifestyle and environmental conditions, dietary habits, physical condition and activity, sexual dysfunction, professional life, psychosocial context and burden, quality of life, digital media use, occupational, medical and family history as well as healthcare utilization. The assessment is completed by genomic and proteomic characterization. Beyond the identification of classical risk factors for major chronic diseases and survivorship, the core intention is to gather valid prevalence and incidence, and to develop complex models predicting health outcomes based on a multitude of examination data, imaging, biomarker, psychosocial and behavioral assessments. Participants at risk for coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, stroke and dementia are invited for a visit to conduct an additional MRI examination of either heart or brain. Endpoint assessment of the overall sample will be completed through repeated follow-up examinations and surveys as well as related individual routine data from involved health and pension insurances. The study is targeting the complex relationship between biologic and psychosocial risk and resilience factors, chronic disease, health care use, survivorship and health as well as favorable and bad prognosis within a unique, large-scale long-term assessment with the perspective of further examinations after 6 years in a representative European metropolitan population.

A method for the graphical modeling of relative temporal constraints.

Searching for patient cohorts in electronic patient data often requires the definition of temporal constraints between the selection criteria. However, beyond a certain degree of temporal complexity, the non-graphical, form-based approaches implemented in current translational research platforms may be limited when modeling such constraints. In our opinion, there is a need for an easily accessible and implementable, fully graphical method for creating temporal queries. We aim to respond to this challenge with a new graphical notation. Based on Allen's time interval algebra, it allows for modeling temporal queries by arranging simple horizontal bars depicting symbolic time intervals. To make our approach applicable to complex temporal patterns, we apply two extensions: with duration intervals, we enable the inference about relative temporal distances between patient events, and with time interval modifiers, we support counting and excluding patient events, as well as constraining numeric values. We describe how to generate database queries from this notation. We provide a prototypical implementation, consisting of a temporal query modeling frontend and an experimental backend that connects to an i2b2 system. We evaluate our modeling approach on the MIMIC-III database to demonstrate that it can be used for modeling typical temporal phenotyping queries.

Moving Towards an EHR Data Quality Framework: The MIRACUM Approach.

INTRODUCTION: Data quality (DQ) is an important prerequisite for secondary use of electronic health record (EHR) data in clinical research, particularly with regards to progressing towards a learning health system, one of the MIRACUM consortium's goals. Following the successful integration of the i2b2 research data repository in MIRACUM, we present a standardized and generic DQ framework. STATE OF THE ART: Already established DQ evaluation methods do not cover all of MIRACUM's requirements. CONCEPT: A data quality analysis plan was developed to assess common data quality dimensions for demographic-, condition-, procedure- and department-related variables of MIRACUM's research data repository. IMPLEMENTATION: A data quality analysis (DQA) tool was developed using R scripts packaged in a Docker image with all the necessary dependencies and R libraries for easy distribution. It integrates with the i2b2 data repository at each MIRACUM site, executes an analysis on the data and generates a DQ report. LESSONS LEARNED: Our DQA tool brings the analysis to the data and thus meets the MIRACUM data protection requirements. It evaluates established DQ dimensions of data repositories in a standardized and easily distributable way. This analysis allowed us to reveal and revise inconsistencies in earlier versions of the ETL jobs. The framework is portable, easy to deploy across different sites and even further adaptable to other database schemes. CONCLUSION: The presented framework provides the first step towards a unified, standardized and harmonized EHR DQ assessment in MIRACUM. DQ issues can now be systematically identified by individual hospitals to subsequently implement site- or consortium-wide feedback loops to increase data quality.

An Analysis of Erlangen University Hospital's Billing Data on Utility-Based De-Identification.

BACKGROUND: To make patient care data more accessible for research, German university hospitals join forces in the course of the Medical Informatics Initiative. In a first step, the administrative data of university hospitals is made available for federated utilization. Project-specific de-identification of this data is necessary to satisfy privacy laws. OBJECTIVE: We want to make a statement about the population uniqueness of the data. By generalizing the data, we try to reduce uniqueness and improve k-anonymity. METHODS: We analyze quasi-identifying attributes of the Erlangen University Hospital's billing data regarding population uniqueness and re-identification risk. We count individuals per equality class (k) to measure uniqueness. RESULTS: Because of the diagnoses and procedures being particularly unique in combination with sex and age of the patients, the data set is not anonymized in matters of k-anonymity with k > 1 . We are able to reduce population uniqueness with generalization and suppression of unique domains. CONCLUSION: To create k-anonymity with k > 1 while still maintaining a particular utility of the data, we need to apply further established strategies of de-identification.