One of the salient lessons learned during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was the importance of data sharing. As the disease spread and the world mobilised to understand the virus and find medical countermeasures and other disease control interventions, much valuable knowledge was lost or action delayed because data was not shared in a timely and open manner.
For that reason, the WHO R&D Blueprint team convened a meeting in September 2015 on this very topic and invited scientific journal representatives to give their views alongside those of scientists, public health experts, industry, NGOs, science foundations and government experts. The result was broad consensus that timely data sharing in general, and in particular during emergencies, is critical to mounting and accelerating an effective response, and to saving lives during an emergency.
That position was strengthened by numerous published expressions of support by members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To further support the open data effort, the Committee has since explicitly confirmed that pre-publication dissemination of information critical to public health will not prejudice journal publication in the context of a public health emergency declared by WHO.
This week, the Bulletin of the World Health Organization has decided to implement a new data sharing and reporting protocol. The protocol is established specifically to address the data gap that exists in responding to the current Zika virus epidemic.