Scientific legacy of COVID-19 at the FMUSP-HC academic health system

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral infection, with potentially devastating consequences to the health and welfare of human populations worldwide. It has had an enormous impact on the daily activities of the largest academic health system in Latin America, namely the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo & Hospital das Clínicas (FMUSP-HC) system. From the beginning of the pandemic, research groups from the FMUSP-HC system conducted a wide range of medical investigations. These groups produced novel findings that have added to the global scientific database. This research will assist in mitigating the impacts of this new disease. Data compiled by the Observatório de Produção Intelectual (OPI) of the FMUSP-HC system () () indicate that there was an increase of over 10% in the total number of publications per year (n=3210) in 2020 compared with 2018 and 2019. A large number of these articles were focused on COVID-19 (n=334). In 2021, a total of 338 COVID-19 related articles were published until October 2021. This accounts for a large proportion (13.7%) of our annual scientific productivity. More than 50% of the COVID-related papers produced by members of the FMUSP-HC community included original data. A notable number of those articles have been published in the highest-impact international periodicals. These include Science, Nature Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, British Medical Journal, and the Lancet family of journals. Finally, the overall citability of our scientific COVID-19 publications can be attested to by an H-index of 35 up until October 2021.