Modern biobanks are becoming more than mere warehouses of human biological samples. Nowadays, these repositories of scientific specimens must handle sample intake, collate reams of data and make the resulting information available to the research community in a useful fashion. Shifting from the role of a sample storehouse to an active research engine is no easy task, but powerful informatics technologies are now helping scientists and biobank managers make the transition.

Take, for example, SpecimenTrack, a research management platform unveiled in May at the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. This web-based application, developed by Remedy Informatics near Salt Lake City, Utah, integrates demographic and geographical data relating to specimen donors, along with the output of clinics and laboratories involved in a particular study, all in a simple visual display that allows researchers engaged in multicenter collaborations to analyze the same information wherever they are. “There are other solutions to narrow slices to this kind of work flow, but there's no other that can provide this kind of holistic overview,” says Hank Wu, Remedy's director of translational informatics.

Already, SpecimenTrack is being used by ten labs at the Frederick, Maryland, campus of the US National Cancer Institute to consolidate molecular, genetic and clinical data from a number of cancer genome projects.

Bio4D provides another platform for sharing biobank information across multiple laboratories. Created by the India-based software firm Persistent Systems together with the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona, Bio4D is currently tasked with tracking samples collected at 40 institutions, following them as they pass between multiple other centers and then feeding back genetic data that help physicians tailor treatments to individual patients. “A solution that allows many different clinical sites, many different biorepositories and various analysis sites to all access the same data, but with proper controls, is extremely valuable,” says Tgen cancer geneticist Jonathan Keats, who announced the commercial launch of Bio4D at the Vancouver meeting.

But it's not just the multiple layers of data from disparate sources that biobanks need to keep an eye on. Mistakes creep in often enough at a more basic level of sample management that cannot be solved by fancy software. Last year, for example, in a survey of more than 130 US institutions, researchers found that pathologists mislabeled about one in every 1,000 samples (Arch. Pathol. Lab. Med. 135, 969–974, 2011).

Software sweepstakes

To help with specimen annotation and tracking, a New Jersey start-up called BioTillion is working on a radio-frequency identification tagging system that can electronically label and monitor large collections of samples in ultra-low temperatures—all without even having to open freezer doors. In a similar vein, Dataworks Development, a data management company located near Seattle, has an iPhone app under development that enables scientists to use their mobile devices to scan the barcode of a biological sample or reagent and update the lab's record of supplies so that more can be ordered if they run low. “It works just like in a supermarket,” says Rick Michels, vice-president of sales and marketing at Dataworks, who presented a prototype of the app at the Vancouver meeting.

Ideally, the new technologies will both cut mistakes and further what biobanks can do. By their very nature, the latest software products encourage better practice by standardizing how data are recorded and shared. “Biobanks are in a position to coordinate with one another into virtual biobanks that provide larger sample libraries and signficant amounts of rare biospecimens,” says Wu. And that should help repositories gain economics of scale without actually expanding.