The first meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the German Biobank Node (GBN) took place in Berlin on the 29th of September. The SAB members Fay Betsou, Dominic Allen, Kristian Hveem, Johann Eder, Gianluigi Zanetti, Kurt Zatloukal reviewed the progress of the German Biobank Alliance (GBA) project and discussed milestones and hurdles 5 month after the start of the project.
Topics concerning key numbers of the GBA biobanks, the role of GBN in BBMRI-ERIC, IT tools, Stakeholder Management activities and Public relations as well as development of a quality management concept were discussed with great enthusiasm. The SAB gave a very positive feedback on the results and progress, especially on achievements within the work packages for quality management and IT were considered as important steps towards a successful conduction of the project.
The SAB strongly recommended the establishment of a biobank IT network that is tailored to the user’s needs. Current national as well as international biobank directories are insufficiently populated and barley used for sample requests. Therefore the GBA biobanks should be developed into an biobank IT network that provides fast and detailed sample information to the user in order to allow cross-biobank collections supporting biomedical research. The SAB praised the user satisfaction query developed and encouraged the team to gather also information from users who could not be served by the biobanks to improve the portfolio.
Overall the SAB was impressed by the rapid starting phase of GBA and the results which have been achieved so far. The discussions raised valid advice and provided excellent recommendations which will be translated into tangible products.
