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.