Health and medical research have a significant impact on society and its value cannot be underestimated. It allows for critical information about disease trends and risk factors, outcomes of treatment or public health interventions as well as methods of care and associated costs.
DPAU is reshaping dementia research by hosting data from international longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of brain ageing with the mission of transforming the epidemiology of ageing and dementia. Led by UNSW Sydney’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), DPAU - designed specifically for the ageing and dementia research community - follows the format of our partner DPUK; and will be hosted on a Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP) at Monash University. SeRP provides an end-to-end solution for securely sharing and analysing data via a mediated and auditable process, including big data such as genomics and medical imaging collections and government health records.
DPAU will host data from CHeBA’s COSMIC collaboration, which has obtained NIH funding to bring several Australian and international studies to this platform - making them accessible to researchers around the globe. DPAU will also host the data governed by the CHeBA Research Bank, including its cohort studies, such as the Sydney Memory & Ageing Study (MAS), Sydney Centenarian Study (SCS) and Older Australian Twins Study (OATS). Data from these cohort studies represent the work of CHeBA researchers funded by 8 NHMRC grants to the tune of $22,000,000 over the last 13 years and have already formed the basis of over 250 research publications. Making the data available via the DPAU will ensure the generous contribution of time given by CHeBA research participants will continue to yield new clues to the causes of dementia well into the future.
Additional functionality of the DPAU for ageing cohort data are the protocols around data curation and harmonisation, the establishment of a standardised ontology for ageing data, and the development of machine learning techniques to facilitate the efficiency of this work. These provide significant benefits to sharing and reusability of data as well as the productivity of future research.
Please note that individuals cannot volunteer for studies within DPAU but we encourage our community to join other trials and studies available.