Development of the ECHOES national dataset: a resource for monitoring post-acute and long-term COVID-19 health outcomes in England

TL;DR

The ECHOES dataset tracks health outcomes of people in England who tested for COVID-19, helping understand long-term effects and risk factors.

Contribution

The ECHOES dataset is a novel national resource for monitoring post-acute and long-term health outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infections in England.

Findings

The dataset includes 44 million individuals tested for SARS-CoV-2 between March 2020 and April 2022.

It combines testing data with health, socio-economic, and demographic information for epidemiological analysis.

The dataset enables investigation of clinical outcomes and determinants like vaccination status and genomic variants.

Abstract

Electronic health records can be used to understand the diverse presentation of post-acute and long-term health outcomes following COVID-19 infection. In England, the UK Health Security Agency, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, has created the Evaluation of post-acute COVID-19 Health Outcomes (ECHOES) dataset to monitor how an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection episode is associated with changes in the risk of health outcomes that are recorded in routinely collected health data.

The ECHOES dataset is a national-level dataset combining national-level surveillance, administrative, and healthcare data. Entity resolution and data linkage methods are used to create a cohort of individuals who have tested positive and negative for SARS-CoV-2 in England throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside information on a range of health outcomes, including diagnosed clinical conditions, mortality, and risk factor information.

The dataset contains comprehensive COVID-19 testing data and demographic, socio-economic, and health-related information for 44 million individuals who tested for SARS-CoV-2 between March 2020 and April 2022, representing 15,720,286 individuals who tested positive and 42,351,016 individuals who tested negative.

With the application of epidemiological and statistical methods, this dataset allows a range of clinical outcomes to be investigated, including pre-specified health conditions and mortality. Furthermore, understanding potential determinants of health outcomes can be gained, including pre-existing health conditions, acute disease characteristics, SARS-CoV-2 vaccination status, and genomic variants.

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