Sintchenko V, Coiera E. The case for including microbial sequences in the electronic health record. Nat Med 29, 22–25 (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-02157-8

Integrating microbial sequencing data into electronic health records, while presenting privacy concerns, will improve patient care and population health and will expand the secondary uses of such data. The growing availability of microbial genomes sequenced for health care rather than research raises the question of whether such data should be included in an individual’s electronic

Rockett RJ, Arnott A, Lam C, Sadsad R, Timms V, Gray K-A, Eden J-S, Chang S, Gall M, Draper J, Sim EM, Bachmann NL, Carter I, Basile K, Byun R, O’Sullivan MV, Chen SCA, Maddocks S, Sorrell TC, Dwyer DE, Holmes EC, Kok J, Prokopenko M, Sintchenko V. Revealing COVID-19 transmission in Australia by SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing and agent-based modelling. Nature Medicine 2020; 26(9):1398-1404.

In January 2020, a novel betacoronavirus (family Coronaviridae), named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was identified as the etiological agent of a cluster of pneumonia cases occurring in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China1,2. The disease arising from SARS-CoV-2 infection, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), subsequently spread rapidly causing a worldwide pandemic. Here we examine