FLC | Agency trio forms COVID-19 Insights Partnership to share, analyze health data

Agency trio forms COVID-19 Insights Partnership to share, analyze health data

July 29, 2020

Today, the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced the formation of the COVID-19 Insights Partnership, an initiative to coordinate and share health data as well as research and expertise to aid in the fight against COVID-19.

The COVID-19 Insights Partnership creates a framework for HHS and VA to utilize DOE’s world-leading high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence resources to conduct COVID-19 research and analyze health data that would otherwise not be possible.

“The Department of Energy is proud to be a member of the COVID-19 Insights Partnership,” said Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. “Our nation’s understanding of COVID-19 has already benefited greatly from our world-leading high performance computing and artificial intelligence resources, and we look forward to continuing our coordination across Federal departments and agencies in the fight against this virus.”

Veterans should be proud of the VA's role in the collaboration, said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.

“Veterans served this country by putting on the uniform and protecting American interests overseas, and now their health data will help us win the fight against COVID-19 here at home,” Wilkie said.

Research and analysis conducted by the COVID-19 Insights Partnership will focus on vaccine and therapeutic development and outcomes, virology, and other critical scientific topics to understand COVID-19 better. HHS and VA will provide additional updates and information on research projects as it becomes available.

Summit, the United States’ fastest supercomputer, located at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is accelerating COVID-19 research by running large scale, complex analyses on a vast amount of health data. Summit’s unmatched capacity to analyze massive integrated datasets and divine insights will help researchers identify and advance potential treatments and enhance outcomes for COVID-19 patients with unprecedented speed.

The partnership expands upon recent efforts by the the president to leverage cutting-edge technologies in the fight against COVID-19, such as the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, which provides researchers worldwide with HPC resources and expertise from leading industry, Federal, and academic partners to accelerate the COVID-19 preventive and therapeutic research.

“This unprecedented data and computing partnership is the latest addition to President Trump’s whole-of-government effort against COVID-19,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “The volume and quality of the data HHS has on COVID-19 has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent months. The Department of Energy’s world-class resources will help us derive new insights from the data we gather to help patients and protect our country.”