COLLECTING MORE MEDICAL DATA.

COLLECTING MORE MEDICAL DATA. This article by Gina Kolata describes the success of a large-scale long-term study of Alzeimer’s patients. The study involved the sharing of a massive data set developed over several years about some 800 patients. What is remarkable evidently is that scientists and companies gave up ownership rights in the data. The data is leading to a “wealth of recent scientific papers on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s” and over 100 studies of drugs relating to the disease. I am surprised that this kind of sharing is “rare.” I am also surprised that this kind of collection of data is unusual. I argued here that there are enormous amounts of data dealing with breast cancer in tumor registries that does not seem to be analyzed and should be analyzed. So I am pleased to see that this project is considered a success and that a similar project will be conducted for Parkinson’s.