Introduction

Biobanks in Belgium have different organisational profiles that influence their business model. Within the BBMRI.be sustainability working group, a tool has been developed to visualise the costs associated with biobanks. This will enable them to share these financial insights with researchers as well as the institutions management and help the biobanks (non-profit structure) with transparent reimbursement of their biobank costs.

Methods

Costs were grouped into three main categories: personnel costs, Biobank Information Management System (BIMS)-related costs and storage/processing costs. For each category, a list of associated costs was included in the calculator tool. By including the total number of new primary samples per year and the total number of samples in storage, a total cost per sample can be calculated for personnel, BIMS and storage costs respectively. The final calculations of the tool provide biobanks with an indication of the real costs per sample in their biobank.

Results

The tool was validated by ten biobanks in the BBMRI.be network, with different types of organisational structures and strategies, including biobanks with disease-specific collections linked to (university) hospitals and biobanks focusing on population cohorts linked to government organisations.  Preliminary analyses showed large differences in costs between biobanks, depending on their type and size.

Conclusions

The final analyses of this exercise will  make biobanking-related costs in Belgian biobanks more visible and transparent and will enable more sustainable biobanking. Their inclusion in a calculator tool will allow to optimise cost recovery from researchers and reporting of total costs to institutional management.