Proof-of-Concept Integration of Heterogeneous Biobank IT Infrastructures into a Hybrid Biobanking Network.

Cross-institutional biobank networks hold the promise of supporting medicine by enabling the exchange of associated samples for research purposes. Various initiatives, such as BBMRI-ERIC and German Biobank Node (GBN), aim to interconnect biobanks for enabling the compilation of joint biomaterial collections. However, building software platforms to facilitate such collaboration is challenging due to the heterogeneity of existing biobank IT infrastructures and the necessary efforts for installing and maintaining additional software components.

On-The-Fly Query Translation Between i2b2 and Samply in the German Biobank Node (GBN) Prototypes.

Information retrieval is a major challenge in medical informatics. Various research projects have worked on this task in recent years on an institutional level by developing tools to integrate and retrieve information. However, when it comes down to querying such data across institutions, the challenge persists due to the high heterogeneity of data and differences in software systems.