A global clinical trial based at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSM) is tracking COVID-19 treatment data worldwide and using a machine learning platform to identify the most effective approaches to test on infected patients in its 40-hospital network.

UPSM’s REMAP-Community Acquired Pneumonia (REMAP-CAP) platform, which was designed in 2015 to find optimal treatments for pneumonia, was quickly adapted to focus on the SARS-CoV-2 virus at the heart of the current pandemic.

Trial sites will test multiple treatments simultaneously in different combinations — including hydroxychloroquine, steroids and medications called immunomodulators that alter the responsiveness of the immune system.

Because the trial uses an adaptive design, it will be able to adjust its focus and add new treatment candidates as the platform analyzes new data, ensuring that participating investigators will always have information on the latest most successful treatments. The trial is open to participation by other trial sites worldwide. The more sites that join the UPSM trial, the larger and more effective the database will be, the university says.