AD Workbench: Alzheimer’s Disease Data-Sharing and Analysis Platform
Powering breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s and related dementias research
AD Workbench is the secure, cloud-based ADRD data sharing, analysis, and interoperability layer of the AD Data Initiative technical suite. Researchers from over 129 countries use AD Workbench to discover AD datasets, collaborate, and run analyses across platforms. View a product overview.
Built to Support our Mission: To Fundamentally Transform Alzheimer’s Disease Research
The AD Workbench was built to support our mission to fundamentally transform Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) research, accelerating progress towards new treatments and cures to help the more than 55 million people impacted worldwide.
Our flagship product is guided by three main principles: increasing interoperability, easing data access, and developing new tools and analytics for researchers to use and share.
With a global community and collaboration, we can drive the development of new, innovative therapies. And together, we can end Alzheimer’s disease.
Powering the World’s Largest Protein Biomarker Discovery Effort: The Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium (GNPC) v1
AD Workbench is well suited for researchers and consortia that want access to a secure, cloud-based, collaborative environment for neurodegenerative research. Users have access to multimodal analysis tools, and researchers may also bring in their own code, models, and approved external datasets – with free compute and virtual machines.
The GNPC v1 case study shares details about how AD Workbench powers the world’s largest protein biomarker discovery effort: a harmonized dataset spanning 250 million unique protein measurements from 35,000 biofluid samples, from 23+ data contributors, and 100+ concurrent researchers.
Powered by Global Research and Imaging Platform (GRIP)
AD Workbench is powered by GRIP, a community-driven platform that enables interoperability, collaboration, and data analytics.
GRIP is an ISO/IEC 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA-compliant platform developed and managed by Global Research Platforms, LLC (GRP).
GRP has also completed a full self-assessment against NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 and maintains a System Security Plan, continuous monitoring, and a documented remediation roadmap for protecting sensitive research data.
Read more here.
The AD Discovery Portal is now live!
The AD Discovery Portal is a user-friendly, publicly accessible dataset catalog designed to enable researchers to explore novel Alzheimer's disease data that are available via AD Workbench.
The Discovery Portal offers a diverse collection of data, including imaging, omics, clinical, and multi-modal datasets, providing a comprehensive resource for researchers.
Approach
We can accelerate progress towards new and better treatments and diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s and related dementias by connecting researchers with the data they need. To get there, a global coalition of partners collaborated to build the AD Workbench.
The AD Workbench data sharing and analytics environment allows researchers to:
The Most Requested Datasets in AD Workbench
Below are the ten most requested datasets of all time, with the average time to a data access decision for each.
Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium (GNPC) - HDS v1
The world's largest neurodegenerative disease proteomics dataset.
Average Decision Time: < 1 week
Bio-Hermes
Compares blood and digital biomarkers for earlier, accessible detection.
Average Decision Time: <1 Week
EPAD LCS v.IMI
Clinical, cognitive, imaging, biomarker, and genomic data from across Europe.
Average Decision Time: <1 Week
A reference induced pluripotent stem cell line for large-scale collaborative studies
Provides genomic, single-cell RNA sequencing, and proteomic data.
Average Decision Time: <1 Week
Longitudinal Aging Study in India Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD)
In-depth study of cognitive aging and dementia for a sub-sample in India.
Average Decision Time: <1 Week
BLSA Open Data
Subset of America's longest-running scientific study of human aging.
Average Decision Time: <1 Week
University of Kansas Alzheimer's Disease Research Center - GNPC
Longitudinal dataset with demographic, clinical, cognitive, and proteomic data.
Average Decision Time: <1 Week
Alzheimer's Disease and Healthy Aging Data
Provides access to U.S. national and state-level CDC data on key indicators.
Average Decision Time: <1 Week
Five CSF proteomic subtypes in AD
Proteomic data for research into molecular subtypes and disease biology.
Average Decision Time: 1-2 Weeks
Emory Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center – GNPC
Plasma proteomic dataset of individuals analyzed on the SomaScan platform.
Average Decision Time: 1-2 Weeks
SIGN UP TO REQUEST DATA ACCESS
How Can Researchers Learn about Accessing Data and Using AD Workbench?
Our Tech Help knowledge base includes video tutorials and other resources to help researchers get started with AD Workbench quickly and confidently.
In Tech Help, researchers can learn how to:
- Request data
- Advance a data access request (DAR)
- Request Workspace access
- Transfer data to a Workspace
- Use Workspace tools
- Share data, and more
Watch this short video to preview how easy it is to get started.
What’s Next for AI in AD Workbench?
Explore our AI Capabilities Roadmap to see what’s newly available, in development, and planned for ADRD researchers.
Chat-based Support Agent
‘Addie’ is a chatbot that users can query using natural language.
NLP Search Agent
‘SmartAssist’ catalog, modules, and workflow search agents.
Intelligent AI Apps
Five+ new apps based on the 2026 AI Prize winners’ solutions and other key innovations.
AI Agent for Accelerating Data Access
‘SmartApprove’ helps users streamline their Data Access Requests (DARs).
Adaptive Data Viz AI Agent
Answers questions about GNPC proteomics data in plain English; acts as co-scientist.
Operational Intelligent AI Agent for Costs Optimization
Finds underused compute, shows what it costs, and recovers it.
AI-enabled Modules & WF
Flexible machine learning pipelines and methods for deep learning.
Data Sharing Principles
The AD Workbench (ADWB) is guided by three main principles: increasing data sharing, easing data access, and developing new tools and analytics for researchers to use and share.
The ADWB encourages researchers to share datasets and resources
- By increasing the interoperability of participating data platforms;
- By adding new data platforms and datasets as quickly as possible;
and - By offering incentives to academic and industry researchers who choose to share resources and data.
The ADWB eases access to this shared data by enabling researchers
- To search available data;
- To manage the datasets they find;
- To navigate data use agreements (DUAs);
- To request access to new datasets;
- To work from a library of existing analytics tools and scripts;
and - To see the usage and quality of available datasets on a clear, transparently presented dashboard.
The ADWB fosters the development of new, shared, tools and analytics
- By providing a place for researchers to use and share their own code and save their work;
- By allowing users to allocate workloads to virtual machines, providing them with elasticity in computing power;
and - By sponsoring hackathons and other organized challenges that expand the community of users.
Users
Different types of researchers and members of the AD and science communities will interact with the ADWB in different ways, which include users
With a Question
A user with a specific question can utilize a set of common analytical tools that are available for quick data exploration. ADWB workspaces also include a suite of R shiny apps to assist users with further data analysis
With Code
A user who plans to analyze existing datasets using their own code can also utilize the available analytical tools for quick data exploration. The R code used to load the data and generate plots is available for export and further analysis, and users can upload their own code or develop their own mini-apps that can be shared more broadly with others in the community. Jupyter notebooks will soon be embedded in the workspaces. For more computing power or specific software, users can configure available virtual machines.
With Data
A user who plans to bring new data to do multimodal or pooled analysis can directly upload datasets and CSV files for analysis utilizing the tools and mini-apps available in the workspaces.
AD Workbench Workspaces: your data laboratory for collaborative analysis
Once you’ve found a dataset that sparks your team’s interest, it’s time to request a Workspace.
A Workspace is a secure, private, cloud-based environment on our platform where a team can access, curate, combine, analyze, and visualize data.
Each Workspace is configurable to your team’s needs and includes key data science tools and bioinformatics pipelines for data management, processing, modeling, and analysis.
Workspaces also provide audit trails that track changes made by any member of your team; which is one of many features that support data security and compliance under the GDPR and other regulations.
AD Workbench Workspaces are powered by Aridhia and GRIP. Secure analyses facilitated by AD Curation Studio are powered by The Aridhia DRE.
