Our Preparedness Work
Timely and transparent sharing of data in a public health emergency (PHE) remains challenging, mainly due to lack of incentives, the absence of appropriate infrastructure, and complex ethical and legal demands. Our goal is to make effective data sharing during PHE a reality.
Principles of Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies
The newly released Principles of Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies provides a framework for timely data sharing during an outbreak. They can be used to support data sharing in PHEs as part of the research response, from preparedness and public health response to the development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.
Ebola outbreak
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo galvanized GloPID-R Member Wellcome Trust to publish a statement on sharing research findings and data relevant to PHEs. Many GloPID-R members, funding bodies, researchers and journals shown their commitment to improving the public health by sharing data rapidly during an outbreak.
Working Group
Data and knowledge sharing in public health emergencies helps support evidence-based decision making. This increases the likelihood of an effective response and reduced morbidity and mortality. It also facilitates studies of new interventions for epidemic and pandemic threats and accelerates the delivery of necessary vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
GloPID-R established the Data Sharing Working Group in March 2016 under the leadership of Katherine Littler (Wellcome Trust) with the objective of developing a system for data sharing during PHEs to support the research response.
This work is intended to support the WHO R&D Blueprint, a global mechanism to accelerate and coordinate research and development (R&D) in PHEs, which addresses both research preparedness and the response during crises.
The group’s goal is to ensure that the principles, tools and approaches developed are useful, relevant and valuable for the broader community involved in emergency response. They are interested in engaging with specific groups such as NGOs, epidemiologists, software developers, industry and scientists as their work develops.
Interested in working together? Contact the Data Sharing Working Group.