Prospective auditors from the German Biobank Alliance (GBA) were trained in biobank-specific topics during a two-day session held in Würzburg on 20–21 August 2018. The attendees had already familiarised themselves with the theoretical principles of conducting audits during a preliminary training session that took place in Berlin in June 2018. Fourteen employees from different GBA biobanks, one representative from the NAKO Health Study and two representatives from the German Centres for Health Research (DZG) attended the two training sessions co-organised by TÜV Süd. “Friendly audits” are expected to begin at the GBA biobanks in the fourth quarter of 2018; audits in cooperation with the NAKO and DZG are also planned from the end of 2019.
Presentations and trial audits – training content
The first day of training focused on biobank-specific topics, such as liquid handling; device, risk and application management; data protection and IT. Members of the QM Core Team as well as Jörg Geiger (Würzburg), Esther Herpel (Heidelberg), Roland Jahns (Würzburg), Michael Kiehntopf (Jena), Matthias Nauck (Greifswald) and Michael Neumann (Würzburg) gave presentations on these topics. On the second day, the training participants worked in small groups to conduct trial audits at the Interdisciplinary Bank of Biomaterials and Data Würzburg (ibdw). They began by preparing questions based on a GBA audit checklist provided by the QM Core team. Each of the subsequent audits of ibdw employees responsible for different work areas then took half an hour. Afterwards, the participants prepared audit reports and presented these to their colleagues.
Uniform documentation of “friendly audits”
Christiane Hartfeldt (QM Coordinator at the German Biobank Node, GBN) supplied the participants with templates for audit protocols and reports to enable the uniform documentation of all “friendly audits” at GBA biobanks in the future.
Find out more about the “friendly audit” concept.
Read the report on the first training session for prospective GBA auditors.
