Risk evaluation and effectiveness of COVID19 vaccines RiCO

>Federal Ministry of Health

Data linkageClaims data

In cooperation with the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute, the Department of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology of the Ruhr-University Bochum, and the Robert-Koch Institute, the PMV research group is involved in the project Risk Evaluation and Effectiveness of COVID19 Vaccines (RiCO), which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Health. 

The project is investigating potential risks of COVID-19 vaccines and their effectiveness using vaccination data and claims data from public health insurers. A secondary data-based observational study will be used to analyze data from vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals as well as aggregated longitudinal data.

Project objectives include investigating adverse events (AEs) following vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine combinations for which there is evidence of risk but which have not been adequately studied and characterized; investigating the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine combinations in general (by age group, over time, and by impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants) and in particular in groups of people who were not included in clinical trials prior to approval or who were underrepresented in the trials (e.g. patients with chemotherapy, autoimmune diseases or HIV); the detection of previously unknown adverse effects using modeling and artificial intelligence methods; the investigation of socio-demographically definable subgroups with a below-average vaccination rate; and the investigation of the effect of parental vaccination on the infectiousness of the insured (young) children.

Duration: 2021–2022
Project partners: Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI)| PMV research group, University of Cologne | Department of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology of the Ruhr-University Bochum | Robert-Koch Institute (RKI)
Methods: Statistical Analyses
Topics: Disease incidence, Population health
Data: Data linkage, Claims data, Data infrastructure, Data preparation