and expense. Also, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) now mandates that secure, encrypted copies of primary GWAS data funded by NIH be made publicly available (with controlled access) for secondary analyses. These accessible datasets are maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP). dbGaP provides both open and controlled access, which allow for both broad release of non-sensitive information, and restricted access to datasets involving genomic data and phenotypic information, respectively [11]. Data access through dbGaP is commonly used for replication and meta-analysis, both of which will be compromised by poor quality data.
