Overview

The National Database for Autism Research (NDAR) is a bioinformatics system created by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and help accelerate scientific discovery. Housed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NDAR facilitates the formation of a world-wide network of ASD researchers seamlessly integrating data, research tools, and institutions.

NDAR provides a common platform for data collection, retrieval, and archiving, while allowing for individual differences in data entry and analysis. Researchers will be able to compare data without releasing personally identifiable information, creating a highly productive environment for the use of ASD research data and information.

• What are NDAR's goals?
  • Promote the sharing of research data relevant to ASD. Once research data is available within NDAR, researchers may use the information to augment their research and/or collaborate with other researchers.
  • Develop standards to promote evaluations and comparisons of data across multiple sites to generate more meaningful results. These standards will enable NDAR to provide a common repository for data while allowing for individual differences among studies.
  • Provide researchers access to useful software tools and infrastructure.
• Capability Overview
  

  NDAR provides the capability for researchers to contribute data to NDAR and to access data from the NDAR Data Repository.

  • Submission of data: NDAR allows researchers to submit phenotypic, genotypic, imaging and pedigree data and supports a variety of data formats. Data can be submitted directly to NDAR.
  • Providing standards, common vocabulary and research management tools: The NDAR team will work with researchers and knowledge management experts to develop vocabulary specifications, and medical information coding schemas to support communications across different disciplines and domains.
  • Accessing data in NDAR: Qualified researchers can access data submitted for broad research access after the completion of the quality control process when data are marked as shared.
• Researcher Benefit

  NDAR will:

  • Provide support for data collection and analysis
    • Comparison and sharing of data
    • Resource library for data collection (protocol elements, training)
    • Data storage and archiving capacities
  • Provide a framework for collaboration among the community of ASD researchers
    • Common platform for data analysis
  • Provide access to ASD research data for:
    • Multi-site trials and research networks
    • Concurrent and retrospective data analysis
    • Cohorts of controls and comparison subjects
    • Meta-analyses
  • Provide an information system that supports
    • Clinical, phenotypic, genotypic and imaging studies, and clinical trials
    • Data analysis across scientific domains
    • Interoperability across NIH and non-NIH systems
  • Provide a system to ensure the quality of data submitted to NDAR
  • Provide anonymity of research participants through the use of the Global Unique Identifier (GUID)