Data institutions have become more prominent in recent years. In 2020, the global pandemic has shown us how tackling global challenges need access to data from across the public, private and not-for-profit organisations. The data institutions effectively collect and share datasets at a worldwide scale, which is playing a vital role in helping governments, businesses and communities respond to the pandemic.

Access to the accurate data can help us to tackle the notable challenges we face – from the earlier discovery of disease to decreasing pollution in urban spaces. We have seen the fight against COVID-19 where a community of data scientists, researchers and engineers exploring innovative ways to analyse and use data, to create hourly predictive outcomes.

Data institutions are not an outcome of the recent health crisis. In fact, there are many essential data institutions which have been around for a long time. One of the first was the UK biobank, and it’s been around since 2006 doing extraordinary work, established to steward genetic data and samples to make them available under specific conditions for health research and development.

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