Biobanks, as a bridge between clinical medicine and research, are essential systems to support advanced medical research, such as precision medicine. A biobank consists of an organized form of storage for biomaterial resources and the corresponding data. Advanced biotechnologies, computational tools, and large-scale databases to explain individual variability are needed to achieve precision medicine for disease prevention and treatment [1,2]. Biological samples and data such as demographic, genetic, clinical, and environmental information in biobanks must be protected for donors’ privacy and security with anonymization and identification procedures [1]. An international standard regarding these issues is provided by the EU Data Protection Directive [1]. Contemporary biobanks also have the important tasks of applying new technologies in biology and IT/ICT (information technology/information and communications technology) systems, implementing a standard coding system for biomaterials (such as the Standard PREanalytical Coding [SPREC] for biospecimens), and resolving ethical and legal issues.
展开▼
