Biobanks Information Paper 2010

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has developed this Biobanks Information Paper to provide information relevant to the establishment, management and governance of biobanks in Australia. For the purposes of this Information Paper, a biobank is defined as a generally large collection of human biological materials (biospecimens) linked to relevant personal and health information and held specifically for use in health and medical research. The primary focus of this Information Paper is on biobanks falling within this definition, but the information provided is also relevant to other collections of biospecimens to the extent that they are used in health and medical research. The aim of biobanks is to facilitate health and medical research, particularly that which is multi-centre and multi-national, while appropriately protecting participants' interests and privacy.

This Information Paper was developed in response to recommendation 19-2 of the Australian Law Reform Commission/ Australian Health Ethics Committee (ALRC/ AHEC) report titled Essentially Yours: The Protection of Human Genetic information in Australia (2003). This recommendation required the NHMRC as well as the Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council (AI IMAC) to review the need for a nationally consistent approach in relation to the collection, storage, use, disclosure of and access to, human tissue collections including pathology samples and banked tissue.