The concept of creating ADNI emerged during a shared car ride between Dr. Neil Buckholtz, who is the chief of the Dementias of Aging Branch at the National Institute on Heath, and Dr. William Potter, an Eli Lilly neuroscientist. Buckholtz realized that NIH “could serve as an honest broker between the pharmaceutical industry and academia,” according to the New York Times article.
       Kolata reported that the utilization of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health was, an organization created by Congress to raise funds on behalf of the institutes, proved critical. Funding came from the National Institute on Aging and institutes, 20 companies and two nonprofit groups to cover start-up costs and keep the project going. Because the collaboration is “open,” information is shared so that companies and academic researchers have access. “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,” Kolata wrote.
        This story is important in helping us know that this new paradigm of research is possible. As advocates, we need to encourage more of this type of groundbreaking work and collaboration.