Biobank Norway 4

Work Packages

As a national research infrastructure, Biobank Norway 1, 2 and 3 has been instrumental in the establishment of a modern, advanced and comprehensive nationwide biobank network at all partner institutions and has fulfilled a primary objective of promoting outstanding research.

Biobank Norway 4 is gradually moving towards the following aims: to meet new and urgent needs related to a new national data landscape, to lay the foundation for promoting personalized medicine, and to develop the biobank network to meet data dependent, analytical challenges that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic with clear relevance to national preparedness in general. 

  • As an infrastructure, we have reached a point where specific resources are needed for running the infrastructure on a daily basis. This includes an operation manager and the quality manager who will lead the operation team in close collaboration with WP-leaders and the infrastructure PI. 

  • Develop procedures for precision clinical trial biobanking across Norwegian hospitals, procedures for “digital precision biobanking”, and integrated biobanking and big data analytical procedures for stratification of clinical trials with rapid feedback to allow recruitment of study participants.

  • Build a modern, digital biobank infrastructure for molecular and phenotypic data from national cohort studies, in compliance with the FAIR principles and in close collaboration with national and international health data infrastructure efforts.

  • Develop a sustainable system for establishing national biobanks involving both primary care and hospitals using diabetes as a model. 

  • Focus on how Norway may exploit its unique and diverse health data resources, to establish a competitive platform for biobank relevant clinical research, as an attractive model for industry. 

  • Map strategies for participant engagement and assess their applicability in the Norwegian context. Focus will be put on investigating strategies that target both present and future generations of participants. 

  • Quality of biobanking is the foundation of all work packages in Biobank Norway, and continuous improvement is key to the sustainable development of biobanks. We provide partner audits of established biobanks to support quality, compliance, and ongoing improvement. We also operate a help desk to assist with guidance and practical challenges in biobanking. In addition, we are responsible for maintaining and updating Best Practices for Norwegian biobanks. We will continue conducting quality studies on biobank samples and strengthen expertise and knowledge-sharing across the biobanking community.

    For partner revisions or Help-Desk, contact our Quality Manager. 

  • We will provide technical support for submission of FAIR datasets and work to increase discoverability of NFEGA-deposited datasets within HAP. We will also support researchers by building portable containerized analysis workflows, deploy and execute these on available secure infrastructures for analysis, and develop methods for integration of biochemical and omics data from relevant biobanks. By supporting users in data processing, workflows and analysis of data from population-based biobanks, we will build capacity for analysis of data in Norwegian research environments.