Using national electronic health records for pandemic preparedness: validation of a parsimonious model for predicting excess deaths among those with COVID-19–a data-driven retrospective cohort study

Abstract

Objectives To use national, pre- and post-pandemic electronic health records (EHR) to develop and validate a scenario-based model incorporating baseline mortality risk, infection rate (IR) and relative risk (RR) of death for prediction of excess deaths. Design An EHR-based, retrospective cohort study. Setting Linked EHR in Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD); and linked EHR and COVID-19 data in England provided in NHS Digital Trusted Research Environment (TRE). Participants In the development (CPRD) and validation (TRE) cohorts, we included 3.8 million and 35.1 million individuals aged ≥30 years, respectively. Main outcome measures One-year all-cause excess deaths related to COVID-19 from March 2020 to March 2021. Results From 1 March 2020 to 1 March 2021, there were 127,020 observed excess deaths. Observed RR was 4.34% (95% CI, 4.31–4.38) and IR was 6.27% (95% CI, 6.26–6.28). In the validation cohort, predicted one-year excess deaths were 100,338 compared with the observed 127,020 deaths with a ratio of predicted to observed excess deaths of 0.79. Conclusions We show that a simple, parsimonious model incorporating baseline mortality risk, one-year IR and RR of the pandemic can be used for scenario-based prediction of excess deaths in the early stages of a pandemic. Our analyses show that EHR could inform pandemic planning and surveillance, despite limited use in emergency preparedness to date. Although infection dynamics are important in the prediction of mortality, future models should take greater account of underlying conditions.