Scientists from the Global Biobank Meta-Analysis Initiative (GBMI) , founded in 2019, have published initial results in the Oct. 12, 2022 issue of Cell Genomics. In a series of papers, the investigators showed that the data collected by multiple biobanks could be harmonized and jointly analyzed, despite initial differences in recruitment strategies, sample collection, and definitions of diseases. Joint analysis identified new risk loci for more than a dozen common diseases, while another paper showed that such joint analysis could also be used to identify such loci for the rare disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).