NIH Issued Statement On Use Of dbGaP In The Cloud

NIH Issued Statement On Use Of dbGaP In The Cloud. NLM Tech Bull. 2015 Mar-Apr;(402):b10.

[Editor's Note: This is a reprint of an announcement published on NLM/NCBI List ncbi-announce, an e-mail announcement list available from the NLM/NCBI. To subscribe to this list, please see the ncbi-announce -- NCBI announcements and updates page.]

On Monday, April 6, 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it is now allowing investigators to request permission to transfer controlled-access genomic and associated phenotypic data obtained from NIH-designated data repositories, like dbGaP, under the auspices of the NIH Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) policy to public or private cloud systems for data storage and analysis.

Please keep in mind that the responsibility for the security of the dbGaP data is assumed by each investigator and their associated institution who has been approved to access the data, not the cloud provider. To assist in this process, NIH has provided as much information as possible for PIs, institutional signing officials and the IT staff who will be supporting these projects.

The post "The Cloud, dbGaP and the NIH" on the NIH Data Science blog discusses the NIH position statement, the Genomic Data Sharing policy, and best practices, as well as NIH IT security requirements and policies.

* "The Cloud, dbGaP and the NIH" - NIH Data Science blog: https://nihdatascience.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/the-cloud-dbgap-and-the-nih/
* The NIH Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) policy: http://gds.nih.gov/03policy2.html
* The NIH Best Practices for Controlled-Access Data Subject to the NIH GDS Policy: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/gap/cgi-bin/GetPdf.cgi?document_name=dbgap_2b_security_procedures.pdf