The biobanks of the Sciensano health institute
; were installed in accordance to the Belgian
; biobanking legislation of 2018. This in order to
; keep preserving and using Sciensano’s existing
; as well as future collections of human body
; material for scientific research. In 2020, the
; Central Biobank Platform (CBP) has been
; developed at Sciensano to support these divers
; Sciensano biobanks, having 171.345 samples of
; various types being currently preserved. Since
; its installment, the CBP has optimized the
; biobanking data management procedures and
; implemented various data quality control
; measures.

After a requirements collection, a biobanking
; laboratory information management system
; with audit trail (SLIMS from Agilent) was
; introduced and configured for the Sciensano
; biobanks. Critical data fields were defined
; taking into account the applicable legislative
; framework as well as quality standards for these
; biobank registers (i.e. datasets). The ALCOA and
; FAIR principles were hereby followed. Several
; data security measures were also implemented
; in SLIMS together with CBP admin support and
; end-user trainings. Completeness and
; consistency of these biobank datasets is
; managed by defining rules and required field
; attributes as well as findable and reusable data
; by applying regular quality control checks.

Several lessons were learned by the CBP over
; the years after introducing the SLIMS system for
; biobanking data management at Sciensano.
; One of the most important conclusions is that
; data entries can only be streamlined by applying
; a strategy including a close end-user support
; with regular data quality checks. Only then will
; high-quality data be maintained and be
; available for future research with biobanked
; samples.