# 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.

## Key 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.