What is a biobank? What is a sample donation? And why should patients agree to such a donation? In order to inform patients about biobanking and to motivate them to provide biospecimens for medical research, the German Biobank Node (GBN) has published an explanatory film for specimen donors. GBN offers the film to all biobanks of the German Biobank Alliance (GBA) for use. Eight GBA biobanks are benefiting from this offer so far – they adapted the animated film and included it on their websites or present it at events. In addition, the films of the ZeBanC, the central biobank of the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), and of the biobank network at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) can be watched on the Charité's clinic TV and the UKE's patient terminal.

"The film explains the entire biobanking process in a comprehensible way, starting with the patient giving consent in the hospital, through sample collection to storage of the samples in the biobank and their subsequent use for research," says Dr. Antje Hombach-Barrigah, coordinator of the biobank network at the UKE. Prof. Dr. Michael Hummel, head of ZeBanC and GBN, adds: "The film shows that sample material and data are very well protected: GBA biobanks work with a tested data protection concept that makes re-identification of the sample donors impossible by using double pseudonymisation of samples and data." Antje Hombach-Barrigah concludes: "With this film, we offer a low-threshold introduction to the topic of biobanking. This is an important step for our public relations work!

The animated film was created in cooperation with the Biobank Graz, whose original production GBN adapted. It complements the GBN information campaign launched in 2018, which uses posters and flyers in numerous clinics of the GBA sites as well as the website biobanken-verstehen.de to give patients and healthy sample donors an understanding of the work and importance of biobanks.