Data sharing in the era of COVID-19

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to test the capacity of world health systems. Since the outbreak started, the global community has learned about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2. In the first few weeks of the pandemic, knowledge about the disease and its treatment was generated from sharing of anecdotal observations and small case series. Although health-care professionals use modern technology to communicate, never before has the failure to build robust data-sharing systems for large-scale near real-time analysis in health care been more obvious.