Alzheimer's Spinal Fluid Test and Research Data Sharing

The recent reports on being able to predict Alzheimer's (Alzheimer's predicted by spinal-fluid test -- CBC, 2010.08.10) are the direct results due to the data sharing of scores of biomedical researchers (Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s -- New York Times, 2010.08.10). The sharing included both academic researchers and drug company researchers. The data sets are available online:
Companies as well as academic researchers are using the data. There have been more than 3,200 downloads of the entire massive data set and almost a million downloads of the data sets containing images from brain scans.
Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), the organization looking after the data, has a very complete policy (Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) Data Sharing and Publication Policy) about their data sharing.

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