Ethical, legal and societal issues
Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications (ELSI) provide dependable, practical, and sustainable services grounded in cutting-edge research to benefit the life sciences community. Our approach involves establishing standards, promoting best practices, and creating a sustainable platform for knowledge exchange, both internally and publicly. Our key focus areas include AI, the European Health Data Space (EHDS), datafication, ethics of AI as well as gender and diversity, all addressed by a team of interdisciplinary experts from fields such as law, philosophy, ethics, sociology, science and technology studies, gender studies and political science.
IT Services
BBMRI-ERIC’s IT services form the foundation of its discovery and access platform, enabling stream- lined access to biobank resources across Europe. The BBMRI-ERIC Directory acts as a central catalogue for metadata describing biobanks, biomolecular resources, collections of data and samples, and additional services. This Directory simplifies the discovery process, allowing users to easily identify relevant resources. Complementing this, the BBMRI-ERIC Federated Platform integrates both the Locator and Finder services, enabling in-depth, privacy-preserving querying of data at the source. This approach allows users to build virtual cohorts tailored to their research needs. For controlled data access, the BBMRI-ERIC Negotiator streamlines the process, acting as an intermediary to facilitate communication and secure access between users and data custodians.
Quality Management
Quality Management (QM) has developed a sophisticated and adaptable QM Service and training programme. This programme is tailored for biobanks focusing on essential cornerstones designed to elevate the performance, capacity, and operational excellence of biobanks by integrating a comprehensive quality management system that spans the entire biomedical research lifecycle. The focus is on the core activities of biobanks such as the collection of samples and data. It will be complemented by the specific requirements for data quality and the handling of artificial intelligence solutions in the healthcare sector and their impact on biobank operations.
Biobanking Development
The main mission of Biobanking Development (BBD) is to effectively integrate newly established National Nodes and affiliated biobanking networks into the broader BBMRI community. This integration process is essential to ensure harmonisation with the rest of our community and thus requires intensified and expedited onboarding procedures across BBMRI’s diverse service domains. These activities are pivotal not only for the emerging National Nodes but also for fostering collaboration within the evolving BBMRI community. Our core services also extend to foster sustainable growth and enhanced visibility of BBMRI’s biobanks, as well as leverage technological developments and active community engagement.
