Biobanks as the Backbone of Modern Healthcare Innovation: Why Infrastructure Matters

To discover the next big innovation, the medical industry needs storage and processing tools. With enough space to store biological samples and data, it can leverage automation and analytics to understand them. Then, healthcare could discover a new therapy, medicine or disease.

Biobanks and laboratory information management systems (LIMSs) are pivotal technologies that address many pain points in modern healthcare development, starting with the speed with which they can make determinations.

What Are Biobanks?

Biobanks are safe and secure places for storing biological samples. One example is the Victorian Cancer Bank in Australia, which used blood samples to better understand the COVID-19 vaccine during its development. Samples can include, but are not limited to:

• Blood
• Saliva
• Tissue
• DNA
• Urine

A repository for diverse biological samples is vital for medical research. Experts can only identify a comprehensive treatment if they can test whether it works in individuals with different biomarkers. Samples come from varying backgrounds, allowing medical professionals to observe healthy or diseased biology.

Testing both is crucial for noticing reactions to medicine, unpacking a previously under-researched illness and determining what knowledge gaps exist in medicine. Eventually, these biological libraries could be the reason humanity discovers cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s and more.

What Are LIMSs?

LIMSs are programs used in laboratories to streamline data processing and research. They can analyze and observe the samples’ conditions and use them for multiple purposes. This includes automated workflows for environmental observation and sample integrity, as well as tracking samples in transit.

These are crucial for modern lab work because they expedite many manual processes that could take technicians countless hours to complete, such as data entry and report generation. It also reduces the risk of human error when handling and using samples for various research projects.

LIMSs can also work at any hour of the day, poring through data, which would be impractical for workforces. They could deliver an immense return on investment by freeing technicians’ schedules for more arduous responsibilities and eliminating the tedium of administrative tasks and paperwork. Therefore, a LIMS is a sound financial and operational decision.

How Do Biobanks Relate to LIMSs?

While LIMSs have multiple purposes, they can be curated for leveraging biobank data. When properly customized, the software is scalable and efficient at analyzing samples. Of surveyed scientists, 77% of them believed the integration of a LIMS boosted the value of pathology services, and 100% testified to the LIMS’s importance in patient care. Syncing this infrastructure produces several outcomes the medical industry needs for rapid research and discovery.

Maintaining Data Integrity

Without a LIMS, tracking and cataloging everything in a biobank is complex, with numerous opportunities for mistakes, such as cross-contamination, data entry errors or losing samples entirely. A LIMS stores and secures information in a single location, making it accessible to partners, stakeholders and researchers. With this visibility, everyone can analyze or question the quality of the information in a scientific study and find room for improvement.

Efficiency at Scale

Catapulting medical research into a tangible innovation requires momentum to keep organizations and funders interested. There is nothing quicker at reviewing data points than programming, allowing scientists to provide results to stakeholders ahead of schedule. Manual sample management and auditing can be automated, and distributing updates can be streamlined.

As biobanks make goals to scale with more diverse samples, LIMS can keep pace with these growing organizations and increasingly nuanced libraries.

The Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, faced multiple challenges as it sought to grow. The team is devoted to essential cell research, such as cancer studies, and registering samples has become cumbersome.

Eventually, the tedium would cause the work to fall behind, so it adopted a LIMS to complement its biobank. It enabled remote access, expanded its depth of stored tissue varieties and consolidated research assets while keeping them categorized.

Boosted Collaborative Potential

If more experts can see progress, quality control errors or workflow changes, the team can stay on the same page. It is easier to collaborate and establish goalposts when everyone has a grasp on remaining resources or in-progress tests. For example, many LIMSs support cloud access, making it easier for multicenter studies to unfold with fewer hurdles. Everything is standardized, eliminating siloed mentalities so frequently present in the medical sector.

The Duke School of Medicine recently launched its OneDukeBio initiative, with one of its primary objectives being to implement a LIMS. In a few years, it will connect 20 of Duke’s biobanks into a comprehensive system. With such a wide-reaching network, this transition will be essential for Duke to achieve greater compliance with the Good Clinical Laboratory Practice guidelines and enhance communications and teamwork with a shared and organized repository.

Why Is This Synergy Essential for Modern Healthcare Development?

LIMSs and biobanks are going to become inextricably linked with one another. When a LIMS capitalizes on the wealth of information in a biobank, it becomes a nonnegotiable fixture in a laboratory. The precision and speed of research could propel countless projects into a new era of progress.

Doing so will instill hope in the sector, allowing many to see that the future of medicine and better patient care is just around the corner.