The fight against Alzheimer disease It’s like putting together a giant puzzle Bill Gates. It’s about putting all the pieces together to get a complete picture of this devastating disease. Researchers around the world are collecting data in an effort to better understand the disease, but sharing and analyzing this information has been a challenge.
However, the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (ADDI) promises to change that. Gates, who has been a tireless advocate for Alzheimer’s research, is leading this effort to use data as a key tool in the fight against disease.
As the co-founder of Microsoft recalls in his BlogUntil recently, sharing data on Alzheimer’s research was a considerable challenge. Patient privacy, the lack of adequate technological tools, and the reluctance of some pharmaceutical companies to share information about clinical trials complicated collaboration between scientists.
This piecemeal approach has not led to significant advances in Alzheimer’s therapeutics since the late 1990s.
The ADDI Initiative
The promise of this initiative lies in the ability to gather large amounts of data, which has historically led to important discoveries in various areas, such as childhood malnutrition: “Combining multiple data sources allowed for a better understanding of the factors affecting children’s growth in South Asia, leading to more effective strategies to address malnutrition in that region.”.
Instead of facing obstacles to accessing multiple databases, scientists now can access and upload information to a global patient database.
Bill Gates and a group of partners have created the ADDI Initiative with the goal of accelerating progress in Alzheimer’s research through data sharing. At the center of this initiative is the Alzheimer’s Disease Workbench, which provides global, easily accessible tools and resources for researchers to share data, code and knowledge.