NICHD DATA AND SPECIMEN HUB (DASH) MODERNIZATION

Investigators

Abstract

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) established the NICHD Data and Specimen Hub (DASH) to facilitate sharing of and access to data and biospecimens from NICHD-funded research. NICHD established the DASH system to support data storage and data and biospecimen sharing for the Divisions of Extramural and Intramural Research, (DER and DIR), Division of Intramural Population Health Research (DiPHR), National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR), and the Office of the Director, Office of Administrative Management (OAM). DASH is an Amazon Web Services cloud-native web application and data repository that hosts and provides a search interface for linked information on nearly 200 NICHD-supported research studies, their associated datasets and biospecimens, authorized users of these studies, and the publications based on analysis of study data. For each of these studies, the DASH system securely stores individual level, deidentified clinical data, study metadata, and study documentation files. The DASH web application provides an intuitive user interface for data submitters, data users, and NIH staff and contains dashboards for data and biospecimen access requests and review and reporting dashboards for NIH staff. NICHD strongly encourages all investigators funded by the Institute to share scientific data1 derived from humans in the DASH data repository or to use the DASH Data Collections feature to register their studies and the location of their data and/or biospecimens. The NICHD Strategic Plan 2020 states in the Scientific Stewardship Goal 2, Facilitating Data Sharing and Access to Biospecimens, that “Data sharing and access to biospecimens efficiently expands research capacity and maximizes NICHD’s investments by promoting hypothesis generation, increasing the potential for secondary analyses, and encouraging reproducibility. NICHD will continue to support the utility and usability of data collected or created with NICHD funding, with a commitment to safeguarding human participants’ privacy and confidentiality,”https://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/strategicplan. NICHD believes that the full value of research investments can be realized when scientific data and biospecimens from NIH-funded research studies are made available in a timely manner to the broader research community. Further, all NICHD intramural and extramural-supported investigators will be expected to share scientific data and research resources for broader dissemination according to the Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing, which goes into effect in January 2023. The NICHD Office of Data Science and Sharing is leading the modernization and expansion of DASH in order to support NICHD researchers’ ability to comply with NIH data sharing policies and to ensure that shared NICHD data and biospecimens are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable for the broader research community.