During a three-day workshop held in Berlin in early November in cooperation with TÜV Süd, prospective auditors of the German Biobank Alliance (GBA) learned the theoretical basics for conducting audits. 13 staff members from different GBA biobanks will now join the existing team as newly trained auditors. Starting in 2024, they will be involved in conducting internal "friendly audits", thus making a significant contribution to the harmonisation of quality in the GBA.

Auditing – how does it work?

The training programme for GBA auditors consists of two parts: Online content on biobanking-specific knowledge and a face-to-face part on how to conduct audits. Based on the DIN EN ISO 19011 standard, participants in the face-to-face workshop learned how to prepare for audits, develop questions and simulate audit situations in small teams. GBN provides guidelines for conducting "friendly audits" as well as comprehensive templates for standardised documentation. Participant Dr. Anita Delor from Freiburg pointed out: "The GBN templates provide comprehensive support for conducting friendly audits and make our task as auditors much easier".

"The feedback received from those attending was very positive," summarised QM coordinator Nhutuyen Nguyen. This was confirmed by newly trained auditor Alfred Gemmel from Erlangen: "Above all, the practical relevance helped us a lot and gave us the opportunity to put what we had learned into practice immediately".

Online training on biobank-specific topics

The second part of the training course is available on the OpenILIAS e-learning platform for flexible training of new auditors. It covers biobank-specific topics such as consent management, data protection, IT, risk management and core biobanking processes. The presentations were recorded by members of the QM Core Team as well as Dr. Ronny Baber (Leipzig), Dr. Jörg Geiger, Prof. Dr. Roland Jahns and Dr. Michael Neumann from Würzburg.

Further information on the "Friendly Audits" concept can be found here.