Best practices for government agencies to publish data: lessons from COVID-19.

Without data, knowing how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic would have been impossible. Data were crucial to understanding how the disease spread and which efforts successfully protected people. Yet, national agencies often did not publish their data in an optimal way, which made responding to the pandemic challenging.

Innovative platforms for data aggregation, linkage and analysis in the context of pandemic and epidemic intelligence.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, open-access platforms that aggregate, link and analyse data were transformative for global public health surveillance. This perspective explores the work of three of these platforms: Our World In Data (OWID), Johns Hopkins University (JHU) COVID-19 Dashboard (later complemented by the Coronavirus Resource Center), and Global.Health, which were presented in the second World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence Innovation Forum.

A global database of COVID-19 vaccinations.

An effective rollout of vaccinations against COVID-19 offers the most promising prospect of bringing the pandemic to an end. We present the Our World in Data COVID-19 vaccination dataset, a global public dataset that tracks the scale and rate of the vaccine rollout across the world. This dataset is updated regularly and includes data on the total number of vaccinations administered, first and second doses administered, daily vaccination rates and population-adjusted coverage for all countries for which data are available (169 countries as of 7 April 2021).

A cross-country database of COVID-19 testing.

Our understanding of the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic is built upon data concerning confirmed cases and deaths. This data, however, can only be meaningfully interpreted alongside an accurate understanding of the extent of virus testing in different countries. This new database brings together official data on the extent of PCR testing over time for 94 countries.

Factors associated with potentially serious incidental findings and with serious final diagnoses on multi-modal imaging in the UK Biobank Imaging Study: A prospective cohort study.

Background: Feedback of potentially serious incidental findings (PSIFs) to imaging research participants generates clinical assessment in most cases. Understanding the factors associated with increased risks of PSIFs and of serious final diagnoses may influence individuals' decisions to participate in imaging research and will inform the design of PSIFs protocols for future research studies. We aimed to determine whether, and to what extent, socio-demographic, lifestyle, other health-related factors and PSIFs protocol are associated with detection of both a PSIF and a final diagnosis of serious disease.

Patient consultation rate and clinical and NHS outcomes: a cross-sectional analysis of English primary care data from 2.7 million patients in 238 practices.

Background: Primary care workload is high and increasing in the United Kingdom. We sought to examine the association between rates of primary care consultation and outcomes in England.

Methods: Cross sectional observational study of routine electronic health care records in 283 practices from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink from April 2013 to March 2014.