Expanding access to provincial SARS-CoV-2 vaccination data in Canada

According to the analysis of CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Despite recommendations following the 2003 SARS outbreak to expedite access to administrative health data for pandemic response, timely access to critical data is limited and may limit research opportunities.

“Robust clinical COVID-19 datasets linked to patient-level administrative vaccination data can be used as clinical trial platforms to prospectively assess the safety and efficacy of vaccines and novel treatments for COVID-19,” writes Dr. Andrew McRae, Cummings School of Medicine at the University of Calgary with co-authors. “Without linkage to patient-level vaccination data held in the province, the utility of carefully assembled national clinical COVID-19 datasets is severely limited.”

In this analysis, the authors highlight how ministries of health can release data for research while protecting patient privacy. Establishing partnerships between provincial data teams and the Health Data Research Network to link data, ensure timely data transfer and support research in vaccine effectiveness would be a key step.

“The lack of a coordinated pan-Canadian secure research environment for interprovincial communication and data analysis was noted as a deficiency in Canadian research infrastructure that limited the timeliness of Canadian research both before and during the pandemic,” the authors write. .

Provincial ministries of health have data on vaccination against COVID-19 but are reluctant to share it with researchers, limiting researchers’ ability to conduct Canadian vaccine research.

“Providing administrative data to independent researchers provides an important opportunity to validate vaccine effectiveness data and strengthen public confidence in Canada’s health and vaccination strategy.”