Characterization and Validation of EHR Computable Phenotypes for Long COVID Using Patient-Reported Symptoms…

Cohort studyJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA· Jul 2026

Characterization and Validation of EHR Computable Phenotypes for Long COVID Using Patient-Reported Symptoms: Insights from the Nationwide RECOVER Program.

Victor M Castro, Vivian Gainer, Nich Wattanasin … Shawn N Murphy

AI in MedicineCohort studyDiagnosisQ1IF 7.2

Machine-learning model using electronic health records accurately identified highly symptomatic long COVID

Characterization and Validation of EHR Computable Phenotypes for Long COVID Using Patient-Reported Symptoms: Insights from the Nationwide RECOVER Program.

Victor M Castro … Shawn N Murphy

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association · Jul 2026 · Q1 in Health Informatics

Purpose

Long COVID (Long COVID) remains poorly understood, and there is a critical need for advanced computational tools to better identify and characterize patients.

Methods

MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURES: We assessed model discrimination and calibration in a held-out test set.

n = 1,501 RECOVER-Adult cohort

Results

Model's accuracy score (AUROC) for spotting long COVID; 1.0 is perfect, 0.80 is good

AUROC 0.80 (95% CI 0.74 to 0.85)

null 0

0.74

0.85

CI excludes the null - significant

More results

The study included 1,501 RECOVER-Adult cohort participants with linked EHR data.

376 (25%) met criteria for highly symptomatic Long COVID based on the RECOVER Long COVID Research Index (Long COVID Research Index).

More results

EHR features associated with Long COVID included clinician diagnosis of shortness of breath, malaise and fatigue, and cardiac dysrhythmias; documented treatment with albuterol, gabapentin, or duloxetine; or elevated heart rate.

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Conclusion · 1 of 2

These findings demonstrate that, using EHR data, a machine-learning model can accurately select patients with sets of self-reported Long COVID symptoms.

Conclusion · 2 of 2

The model could help identify patients within a health system with the highest probability of the condition and facilitate screening, recruitment for clinical trials, and etiologic studies.

Characterization and Validation of EHR Computable Phenotypes for Long COVID Using Patient-Reported Symptoms: Insights from the Nationwide RECOVER Program.

Characterization and Validation of EHR Computable Phenotypes for Long COVID Using Patient-Reported Symptoms: Insights from the Nationwide RECOVER Program.

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