The ABIDE_MI project (“Aligning Biobanking and DIC Efficiently”), which started in May 2021, links central research infrastructures at university medical sites in Germany. The project aims to make biospecimens and patient data from routine care jointly usable for research. To this end, ABIDE_MI connects biobanks and data integration centres (DIC) on a technical and regulatory level. The German Biobank Node (GBN), 24 university medicine sites nationwide and the coordination office of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) are involved. ABIDE_MI is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with approximately € 5 million until October 2022.
A sustainable health IT infrastructure
“Our goal is that information and data of the biospecimens can be linked to other data from patient care to support research. The ABIDE_MI project is therefore concerned with linking the biobank of a university hospital to the respective DIC,“ explains Prof. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Prokosch, Friedrich Alexander University (FAU) Erlangen-Nuremberg, principal investigator of ABIDE_MI. “The cooperation of the two infrastructures makes sense in order to create a sustainable data infrastructure in the university hospitals and to generate synergies between the DIC and biobank activities,“ Prokosch continues. “With ABIDE_MI, we are pursuing an interdisciplinary approach in which the achievements and experiences of the MII and the biobanks of the German Biobank Alliance are brought together in a sustainable health IT infrastructure,“ adds Prof. Dr. Michael Hummel, head of the GBN and also principal investigator of ABIDE_MI.
Central query and analysis portal for data and biospecimens in Germany
The ABIDE_MI project also aims to simplify the procedure for applying for research projects. In future, researchers will only have to submit one application for biospecimens and data. To this end, the MII coordination office is currently setting up a central online portal, the so-called German Research Data Portal for Health, which is scheduled to go live in 2022. Researchers can submit applications for projects there and request data and biospecimens for medical research purposes via a central office. They can also conduct feasibility studies via the portal to find out what data is available for research at the university medical sites of the MII. Local expert committees at the participating sites, so-called Use and Access Committees (UAC), decide on the research applications. Their decision is transmitted electronically to the central portal and the applicant researchers. The portal is also aimed at patients – interested parties can use the portal at any time to find out about proposed and ongoing research projects that are being carried out within the framework of the MII.
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