Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Jorge IF Salluh reports a relationship with Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Brasil (CAPES) that includes: funding grants. Rashan Haniffa reports a relationship with Wellcome Trust that includes: funding grants. Rashan Haniffa reports a relationship with National Institute for Health and Care Research that includes: funding grants. Rashan Haniffa reports a relationship with Minderoo Foundation Limited that includes: funding grants. Abigail Beane reports a relationship with Wellcome Trust that includes: funding grants. Otavio Ranzani reports a relationship with Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities that includes: funding grants. Otavio Ranzani reports a relationship with European Social Fund Plus that includes: funding grants. Dave Dongelmans is unpaid chair of the Dutch ICU registry: National Intensive Care Evaluation (NICE). David Pilcher sits on the editorial boards of Critical Care Science and Critical Care and Resuscitation. David Pilcher is also the chair of the ANZICS CORE registry (honorary unpaid position). Given his role as editor, David Pilcher had no involvement in the peer review of this article and had no access to information regarding its peer review. Full responsibility for the editorial process for this article was delegated to another journal editor. Abigail Beane is an unpaid WHO adviser to the Acute Care Action Network. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.