The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced the publicly accessible global individual patient data (IPD) platform for tuberculosis treatment (TB-IPD), an initiative that will increase the knowledge base for normative guidance on optimal treatment modalities for tuberculosis (TB) and stimulate TB research. 

This secure platform already contains individual records with treatment outcomes of over 5,000 TB patients with commitments from additional data contributors to increase this number to up to 50,000 during 2023 including data on TB treatment in children and pregnancy.

The TB-IPD platform provides a powerful opportunity for learning and advancement of the field of TB treatment. Requests for access to data from, or to contribute more data to the TB-IPD platform can be made as of today by following the processes described on the TB-IPD platform website.

Secure storage, data protection and quality control mechanisms compliant with modern data privacy and human right laws, appropriate governance structures and acknowledgement of data owners are critical for success and these were key considerations for WHO during development of the concept and the selection of the team at UCL as the data curator.