Innovation Spotlight
An Innovative Online Registry for Mycotic Infections in COVID-19
The Need
The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need for rapid international collaborative efforts that ensure timely clinico-epidemiologic studies that can identify novel risk factors,
including those that may be specific to different COVID-19 variants. India and other countries in South East Asia faced another challenge with over 40,000 cases of COVID-19
associated mucormycosis (CAM) occurring in India alone.
The Solution + Implementation
Along with colleagues working in various institutions in India and other countries and led by Dr. Shitij Arora, we have developed an online registry for mucormycosis (Link - www.covidmucor.com). MUNCO (Mycotic infections in COVID-19) is an international database to report these cases. The registry aims to rapidly identify the demographic and clinical variables associated with outcomes in this deadly disease. This is likely to be one of several such organic efforts to study the mucormycosis epidemic.
Results
As of August 2021, the registry has over 700 records. The analysis of first 65 cases was published on August 27th, 2021 in Emerging Infectious Diseases @cdc.gov.
The Team
MUNCO is led by Dr. Shitij Arora, Dr. Vagish Hemmige, Dr. Yoram Puius, and Dr. Sunit Jariwala. The registry has been supported by the Community Science Alliance, an alliance of over 150+ healthcare organizations (including hospitals, rural health non-governmental organizations, insurers, health tech companies, and others) seeking to leverage digital health technologies to drive integrated care models.