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Has the biobank bubble burst? Withstanding the challenges for sustainable biobanking in the digital era

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 20:50 authored by Donald ChalmersDonald Chalmers, Dianne NicolDianne Nicol, Kaye, J, Bell, J, Campbell, AV, Ho, CWL, Kato, K, Minari, J, Ho, C-H, Mitchell, C, Molnar-Gabor, F, Margaret OtlowskiMargaret Otlowski, Thiel, D, Fullerton, SM, Tess WhittonTess Whitton
Biobanks have been heralded as essential tools for translating biomedical research into practice, driving precision medicine to improve pathways for global healthcare treatment and services. Many nations have established specific governance systems to facilitate research and to address the complex ethical, legal and social challenges that they present, but this has not lead to uniformity across the world. Despite significant progress in responding to the ethical, legal and social implications of biobanking, operational, sustainability and funding challenges continue to emerge. No coherent strategy has yet been identified for addressing them. This has brought into question the overall viability and usefulness of biobanks in light of the significant resources required to keep them running. This review sets out the challenges that the biobanking community has had to overcome since their inception in the early 2000s. The first section provides a brief outline of the diversity in biobank and regulatory architecture in seven countries: Australia, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA. The article then discusses four waves of responses to biobanking challenges. This article had its genesis in a discussion on biobanks during the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX) conference in Oxford UK, co-sponsored by the Centre for Law and Genetics (University of Tasmania). This article aims to provide a review of the issues associated with biobank practices and governance, with a view to informing the future course of both large-scale and smaller scale biobanks.

History

Publication title

BMC Medical Ethics

Volume

17

Issue

39

Pagination

1-14

ISSN

1472-6939

Department/School

Faculty of Law

Publisher

BioMed Central Ltd

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

Copyright 2016 The Authors Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Technological ethics; Law reform

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