Uses and abuses of real-world data in generating evidence during a pandemic.

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and called for immediate collaborative initiatives for faster access to available data, with a view to generating robust research evidence informing global and local public health policy.1 This urgency has helped a number of national bodies to secure data and their linkages and to provide safe analytical environment for researches to ask important questions, including pseudonymised data linkages, high-throughput computing environment, and access and authentication processes with clear information governance.2,3 Linkages of multiple sources of clinical data within a trusted environment are being granted at a rapid pace and there is a greater provision of access to COVID-19 studies, improved collaboration, expedited governance and ethical approval of studies.4 Some organisations have also been proactive in getting groups together to work collaboratively on relevant research questions which will rapidly benefit clinical care and public health alike.