Since the beginning of the pandemic of COVID-19, scientists from the HCFMUSP System have been working intensively on research investigating different aspects related to this new disease. These groups have been producing a large number of scientific articles reporting findings that contribute to enhancing epidemiological, pathophysiological, diagnostic, treatment, and prevention knowledge for COVID-19.

In this context, this focused attention to one disease was an opportunity to innovate the institutional scientific management, putting into practice previously untested research support models. In May 2020, the FMUSP Board of Directors and the HCFMUSP Deliberative Board installed an emergency institutional group to support research infrastructure and logistics, under the coordination of the HCFMUSP Research Laboratories Executive Board and with representatives from various research management instances of the institution. This group brought the REDCap Brazil team to supervise and facilitate the work of several research groups to capture information and manage the databases of their studies based on COVID-19 hospitalizations in HCFMUSP. Contacts were also strengthened with the Information Technology Center (NETI) of HCFMUSP, which implemented methods for automated extraction of data from electronic medical records, using for this the forms designed by the teams of the HCFMUSP Clinical Board and the COVID-19 Crisis Committee installed in the Hospital. With the contribution of information extracted by NETI-HCFMUSP and the cooperation of research groups that agreed to share the data captured for their studies, the construction of our first institutional database for research began in July 2020, with detailed records on the thousands of hospitalizations that occurred in HCFMUSP by COVID-19. Gradually, this hospitalization database was integrated with two other institutional initiatives also tested for the first time in the pandemic context: the organization of a multidisciplinary follow-up assessment after discharge in 2020; and the installation of the COVID-19 Biobank, designed to process and store leftover blood tests performed during hospitalizations for future research.

An institutional data management plan focused on the use of institutional data and samples was elaborated and approved by the HCFMUSP Deliberative Board, with the support of the FMUSP's Library for its elaboration. Based on this plan, a management/publications committee (Steering Committee COVID) was installed and started to meet periodically to organize the granting of access to data from the hospitalization database and to supervise the cession of blood samples for research, in addition to proposing strategies for publications and planning schedules for release of data to other repositories. To feed its actions, the committee received periodically lists of all research projects in progress in the institution, compiled by the HCFMUSP Clinical Research Office. Finally, the committee approved the concept and criteria for inserting the use of a corporate coauthor (HCFMUSP COVID Study Group) in scientific articles that use a significant amount of data from institutional databases.

All ethical and data security principles have been applied following current standards of data protection and confidentiality. No identification of patients' personal information is made available. No individually identifiable data is shared with the researchers (i.e., data is "anonymized"). Researchers sign a legal agreement not to make any attempt to identify participants. Research projects applying for access to the HCFMUSP institutional databases must be approved in advance by the Ethics Committee of the institution to which the researcher is affiliated.

The sharing of data and samples for additional research studies is conditional on the strict need for confidentiality of individual participants’ data and samples. Access to our institutional data and samples requires agreement from the researcher in assuming their ethical and legal responsibility. Individually identifiable data is never released.