Data, science and innovation are essential for accelerating progress towards delivering the Triple Billion targets and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the urgent need for robust, timely statistics and evidence to promote health equity. During this biennium, essential foundations were laid to ensure that WHO is a modern, data-driven organization and to support countries in enhancing their capacity to reach these goals.

The first assessment of countries’ data and health information systems, the SCORE global report, representing 90% of the world’s population, indicates that better data are necessary to strengthen responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and improve health outcomes. The SCORE for health data technical package guides countries in investing in collection, analysis and use of health data on priority areas. Our goal is for every country to have robust surveillance, complete civil registration and vital statistics and optimal routine health information systems in time for the 2025 review.

WHO is already committed to change in the context of its transformation and has met the various challenges posed by the pandemic by using “living approaches” and creating and introducing several new mechanisms to ensure rapid reviews of evidence, to provide interim guidance and to ensure internal and external coordination of the evolving emergency. These new mechanisms, with digital tools and optimized approaches to guideline development, made it possible to produce “living guidance” within 5–7 weeks from reception of full data; in the past, the turnaround time was typically 6–9 months. One example is living guidance on COVID-19 therapeutics.

The quality, norms and standards department established a COVID-19 publication review committee in March 2020 to review all WHO-generated COVID-relevant technical documents. At the close of the biennium, the committee had reviewed over 1600 submissions, with an average turnaround time of 3 working days.

The HINARI programme is maintained by the WHO library with major publishers to provide low- to middle-income countries with free or low-cost access to one of the world’s largest online collections of biomedical and health literature. More than 25 000 journals, 100 000 e-books, 115 databases and other information resources are now available to health institutions in more than 125 countries, areas and territories, benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers and, in turn, contributing to improving world health.

WHO launched guidance on digital documentation of COVID-19 certificates to support countries in producing verifiable digital records of vaccination status and test results, providing a foundation for globally interoperable personal health records for immunization. The digital systems of over 100 countries are consistent with WHO guidance.

To address data gaps, WHO updated the World Health Survey Plus with 21 standard health modules from which countries can choose according to their priorities. Twelve countries are implementing the Survey; six countries are implementing household health examination surveys, and six are using mobile phones to assess the impact of COVID-19 testing, risk perception, vaccine acceptance, health expenditure and access to health care on people’s lives.

Thirty-five countries are using the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, offering a common language to health professionals for digital sharing of standardized data worldwide.

WHO published its two annual World Health Statistics reports, tracking progress towards the SDGs and the Triple Billion targets, and, in collaboration with the World Bank, launched the biennial UHC Global Monitoring Report. A 10-year account of death and disability by region and country and by age, sex and cause was presented in the Global Health Estimates 2009–2019. In collaboration with partners, WHO quantified the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and released global estimates on excess mortality due to COVID-19 for 2020, showing an excess of 3 million deaths.

Health equity is a priority, and identifying gaps is crucial to leaving no one behind. The Health Equity Monitor – one of the largest global databases – tracks disaggregated data for 115 countries. To strengthen country capacity in monitoring equity and closing gaps, the updated Health Equity Assessment Toolkit and an e-learning module on immunization are now available.

Tracking and delivering measurable impacts in countries is a joint commitment of Member States, partners and the WHO secretariat. The Triple Billion Triple Billion Dashboard, providing data on the SDGs, the Triple Billion targets and 46 outcome indicators, allows us to track our commitments. Five “stocktakes” on universal health coverage, health emergencies and healthier populations were based on data on where progress is being made or lagging and opportunities for predicting scenarios, prioritizing policy actions and accelerating progress toward the Triple Billion targets and the SDGs.

WHO is also implementing data governance mechanisms and has updated its data-sharing policies.