Welcome to the second episode of the ‘Wizards of Biobanking podcast’. This episode features Dr. Georget Reaiche-Miller, Senior Biobank Manager from the University of Adelaide biobank. We conversed with them on various biobanking topics such as:
- Introduction to the University of Adelaide Biobank
- Type of Biobank
- Safety of Biospecimens
- SOP and Publications on Biospecimen Safety
- Sustainability of Biobank
- Introduction to Dr. Georget Reaiche-Miller
- Participant Recruitment for Research
- Publicizing Biobank
- Challenges in Biobanking Operations
- Biobank Certification
- Sharing Biospecimens with Researchers
- Biospecimen Data Collection
- Australasian Biospecimen Network Association (ABNA)
- Tips on Selecting Biobanking LIMS
The University of Adelaide biobank has top-notch security to protect biospecimens. Explaining the security arrangements at the biobank facility, Georget said –
“We’ve got 48 freezers split over two facilities, and we’ve got 38 alarms for each one. The facility itself is only accessed by the Adelaide Biobank staff. Security does a walk-through 3 times a day to physically make sure that everything looks okay, and we have dual authentication to enter the facility.”
Read the full transcript below to learn more about how the ORIGINS biobank operates, what type of specimens and data they collect, biobank accreditation, staff training, etc. Please write to us at [email protected] if you have any questions or suggestions.
Full Episode Transcript:
Srikanth:
Hello everyone I am Srikanth Adiga, CEO of OpenSpecimen, and today I have with me Georgette from the University of Adelaide, who heads the biobank. Georgette, welcome to the second edition of Wizards of Biobanking. This is a podcast that we’re doing with people who are closely involved with biobanking and trying to understand both their work and research and as well as in general, everything around what they do. So, Georgette, I’ll let you first introduce yourself, what your role is, and what exactly the University of Adelaide does.
(1:07)
Georgette:
Thank you, Sri. Thank you for having me, it’s a real pleasure. So, my name is Georget Reaiche-Miller, and I am the manager of the University of Adelaide Biobank. I have been working for the biobank since 2014. Our biobank is slightly different in the sense of how it came about. So back in 2011, the University of Adelaide had undergone a number of local research failures, freezer failures which resulted in multi-million dollar losses. So at the time, the faculty of health and the faculty of science, deans, contacted the university’s DVCR (Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research) saying – ‘we need a better solution for storing our critical samples’. So, what the DVCR then did was create a research or a working group which met all factors from the faculties involved, and they came up with the idea of the biobank.
Now, originally the biobank was supposed to be just a storage location to start with, where the critical or irreplaceable samples from local freezers in the local schools will be stored. That’s how it all started. Now we also work obviously with the faculties, but we also make the samples available for other researchers. So, we communicate, I guess create collaborations between researchers. So, the biobank currently has forty-eight -80 freezers. We are only storing -80 products at the moment. We are currently in expansion mode, and we’re putting proposals through to include liquid nitrogen as well as -20 freezers. Our next step would be to include the processing of samples. We also store samples from clinical research human samples, non-human samples for basic research, animal samples, plants, yeast, seeds, and soils. So, our biobank covers pretty much everything.
Srikanth:
Okay, thanks for the introduction. So let’s get into some details around that. How many researchers do you cater to?
Georgette:
So, currently, not all the researchers use the biobank, but the biobank offers other services, such as helping with grant applications, and helping use the LIMS that took to catalog the samples in the database. So, we currently have I think it’s approximately 160+ research groups and about 54–55 researchers actively using the biobank for storage.
(4:31)
Srikanth:
Is the biobank particular to a disease, or is it multidisciplinary?
Georgette:
It’s multidisciplinary. So, we have samples from cancer and diabetes, but we also have samples from animal, plant, and seed preservation. So, we’re very broad in the material that we store and the type of research we support.
Srikanth:
In terms of distribution, are they spread across or are there any 1–2 diseases that are like dominating the counts?
Georgette:
I think 60% of our contents were human samples and 30% were basic animal research and the 10% percent were yeast and soil. When it comes to human research, the majority is currently on juvenile diabetes studies and also infectious disease studies. So, we have meningococcal B vaccine development as well as COVID-19. But mainly our main users are juvenile diabetes. But, as I said, we also have cancer, gastroenterology, lung disease like COPD, and so on so forth.
Srikanth:
Is there a specific reason for that? Is Adelaide an area with a more diabetic population?
Georgette:
No! So, this particular study it’s now currently an international one, it started off as a national study, and all states in Australia were involved in metropolitan and regional. It’s looking at juvenile diabetes. It’s the first study of its kind. So, they’ve collected patient samples from the babies, the mothers when they were pregnant, siblings, and the fathers. I believe that they’re now in collaboration with work in Germany, so it’s a pretty big study.
(6:57)
Srikanth:
Okay, so let’s go into the other aspect. You mentioned it was around 2014 or when you joined, there was an issue with the safety of the specimens or how it was handled. So, was there a specific incident or was it in general a concern around how specimens were managed?
Georgette:
It was a general concern. So, I did my Ph.D. and my postdoc in virology in Hepatitis B virus at the University. At that time, our lab also went through some freezer failures. Although, it was not like a million-dollar loss. But one of the issues at the time was that researchers didn’t really know what they had in their freezers. So, there was no real catalog of what was the contents, also freezes were not monitored or connected to security alarms, they didn’t really have a backup. I mean some did but not all. So if a freezer failed, then they did a backward exercise to work out what they had in there. Had researchers known that they had really precious samples in there, then they would have taken a bit more care of how the freezes were managed. So, this was found before I was part of the biobank. But what the original findings were is poor management of the freezers, also due to funding. Unfortunately, back in 2012 or 2013, our national health research council reduced the funding for biobanking.
So, there were a lot of issues in terms of what could be used for storing samples outside local freezers. But one of the solutions as part of the biobank was guidelines on how to manage. So prior to the biobank being established because it was a purposely built facility in the interim, the first thing they rolled out was the management of the local freezes. These included cataloging all the samples and making sure that every single sample was in the LIMS. Although we do not like to give a freezer a dollar value because that can change, what we’ve done is that we’re giving them a risk rating. So, we use our University risk Matrix as the basis for it. We have created examples of what samples would fall under an extremely irreplaceable category. So, obviously, these would be samples from patients that have passed away from a very big study that you cannot replace it. We have samples at the moment that were collected in the Himalayas. You can’t go back and collect the same samples. It might also include samples that no longer will have human or animal ethics to do, so those samples are irreplaceable. Then we follow down from major to moderate to minor to significant. So, when researchers are cataloging their freezers, they give their boxes and their contents a risk rating. In the event of failure, also to properly manage the contents, it’s best to know what’s really precious.
Other things that were introduced were annual freezer maintenance. So, we have a procurement system, we have preferred suppliers for maintenance of university -80 freezers. This is all included in the university-wide cold storage management policy, which was introduced in 2016. In the policy it is mentioned that it is compulsory to include the alarm of the freezers, having a clear emergency plan on the freezers, who is the first point of contact. Also, part of the policy states that anything or any samples that fall under the category of extremely irreplaceable have to be stored in the biobank or have at least a duplicate in the Adelaide biobank. And we strongly encourage people who have samples in the main categories to do the same. So, slowly but surely, once everybody started cataloging and showing that all the samples are up-to-date in the LIMS, then the biobank got more and more use, and then you know we’ve started getting phone calls from interstate or other universities saying – I know you’re the Adelaide biobank, and you must have samples on liver cancer (for example) and then our role is to say okay I’ll contact our lever research group and I say so-and-so likes to collaborate with you, and then we don’t handle those samples ourselves because we don’t own them, but our job is to put them in touch, so they can develop collaborations. We’ve had quite a number of collaborations done that way.
(12:26)
Srikanth:
Right, I think of all the biobanks that I have seen across the U.S., Australia, etc. the focus on safety and security at the University of Adelaide is a notch above, not only in terms of the policies, the infrastructure, that you guys have set up, is I think truly amazing. Is there any kind of documentation, SOP, or a paper that you guys have published around this?
Georgette:
It’s funny you should say that I presented the work that we’ve done. So, we are well known for disaster recovery. And one of the things is that we are really strong one is the protection of samples and, as you have visited our facility, have got any backup known to man, which I’ll cover in a second. But I was approached by one of the journals to put our ‘Disaster Recovery Plans and Procedures’ that we have in place in a paper form, and I’m currently writing that up. So fingers crossed it’ll get published, and we’ll be able to share that with everybody.
But just in a nutshell, what we have in the biobanks is that – we have all the -80 freezers connected to liquid CO2. We have set the parameters so that when the freezers get to -55, the liquid CO2 will kick in to keep the freezer at that temperature should there be a freezer failure or a power outage. We have calculated that the amount of CO2 we have available would last us about 6–8 hours of extra CO2 purging in per freezer. On top of this, we also have purchased freezers from the market, and like I mentioned before, we have a preferred supplier system. We have gone to the market and looked at the freezers which have the quickest cooldown time and the slowest warm-up time. So, technically, I think from memory, we have about nine hours before the freezers will get to -55. So if there’s a power outage or a particular freezer fails, we have about 18 hours before we hit disaster. All the freezers are connected to our university security, we have a non-call roster 24*7. I’m the first point of contact, but we also have a team underneath if I’m not able to make it or answer the call. The freezers themselves also have remote monitoring, so what we’re able to see is if an alarm goes off, through security we’re able to monitor the state of the freezer. So, we’ll be able to see whether the freezer’s gone offline whether it’s just the temperature issue, the compressor issue. And judging by the amount of temperature that’s dropped, we can assess how soon we need to attend.
Generally, if you look at the publications, it is recommended to have one empty freezer for every 10 freezers in use, but because we’re telling our researchers that we are looking after protecting your extreme samples, we go a little bit further, and we have one empty freezer for every seven full freezers we have. If there’s a freezer failure that has come in, put all the contents in the same order as they are in one piece into the next, turn it off, and get the maintenance people to have a look at it. So, we have all sorts of alarms in the room itself because we have CO2 liquid CO2 in the room, we have CO2 sensors, oxygen depletion sensors, and water, and floor sensors, so to ensure that any internal flooding or outside flooding is readily detected. We’ve got sensors on the outside of the biobank. It’s also built at a slight height so that if there is any minor flooding it won’t get inside. We’ve got PC2, negative pressure sensors, and humidity sensors. We’ve got 48 freezers split over two facilities, and we’ve got 38 alarms for each one. The facility itself is only accessed by the Adelaide biobank staff. Security does a walk through 3-times a day to physically make sure that everything looks okay, and we have dual authentication to enter the facility.
(16:40)
Srikanth:
Yeah, that’s amazing. The extent and the level of attention to the details that you guys have done. But one of the common questions that would come up is how do you sustain? Doing all this must be very expensive, so how do you sustain the biobank in terms of funding?
Georgette:
Yes! So currently, the University of Adelaide biobank is a co-funded facility. So 50% of the funding comes from DVCR and DPCS offices and the other 50% split over the faculties that use the facility. So, it’s not costing researchers themselves any money. So that way, we’re able to support the researchers, and ensure that their research is top quality without costing them any money. Like I said before, because NHMRC and other funding bodies don’t necessarily include biobanking unless it’s part of the project, the university does its best to support the researchers by co-founding the facility.
Srikanth:
Right, so this is something that I have seen most biobanks struggle with, in terms of trying to figure out what is the best way to sustain the biobank – is it to charge the researchers? Some people charge by collection, some people charge by storage, distribution, or in your case, that is sustained. So, do you think this model is much better than trying to get the researchers? Because I’d suppose the advantage of this is that it encourages more and more researchers to actually use the biobank without having to bother about how much it will cost me.
Georgette:
Yes and I have a couple of examples of that. The biobank when it was first set up, it was on the cost recovery model. And because the grants don’t run for more than 3–5 years depending on what grant you got, researchers were really reluctant to store contents in the biobank because as soon as the money dried out, they didn’t know why they would do that with the samples. That is why the model changed for storage. Having said that, we only store contents for the University of Adelaide staff and researchers. We don’t store contents for members outside the University. We are working on a statewide approach, and we’ve got a bit of work to do on that front, and I’m sure that if we’re able to offer the services outside the University or include other services such as processing that would include a fee, but we haven’t made it there yet. So, I can’t help you with that one. But yeah for now, because it’s only storage for the University of Adelaide staff and researchers, and it was built to protect research and ensure that top quality research is produced within the university. It is currently core funded.
(19:34)
Srikanth:
Let’s take a break from the biobank. Let’s talk about yourself. So, you said you did your Ph.D. at the University of Adelaide, and then you got into this. So, was biobanking part of what you were doing? Like what interested you to get into biobank?
Georgette:
Absolutely! So, I did my Ph.D. and postdocs in virology. I did my Ph.D. in Hepatitis B virus, so it involved collecting a lot of samples and processing them and analyzing the data. I particularly had a very good database of all the samples in just the simple Excel spreadsheet. I also swapped or worked in collaboration with people interstate, also knew what samples they had and their research. Unfortunately, the research in Hepatitis B at the time when I finished in the lab in 2014, had been reduced. Luckily, there’s an effective hepatitis B vaccine to protect against hepatitis, so our funding bodies didn’t put it in the important basket. Therefore, the funding was drying up, which is why the research group closed, and I moved into biobanking. But the reason why I was drawn to biobanking that’s accessible in getting their biobank role was because of my previous experience in banking the samples for several different research that was done within the lab. We also worked with a lot of PC2 and some PC3 Laboratories as well as quarantine material. So, I had the expertise for years in this area. Even though other times the word biobanking didn’t really exist, it was all there. So, once I realized that if the facility was being built to support this sort of research and seeing how biobanking had been growing internationally, I was very keen to jump on board and put my biobank hat on.
Srikanth:
Nice, so you did your Ph.D. at the University of Adelaide right, so did you do your schooling in Adelaide too?
Georgette:
Yeah, so I am originally from Venezuela in South America. I came to Australia when I was 13
years. I did my high school here. I actually did one year of medicine back in Venezuela. I soon realized that I wasn’t a people person and that I worked much better behind the bench, so I came back to Adelaide where my family was. I did my bachelor of science, Ph.D. and stayed here. So, I have actually been at the University of Adelaide since 2000. In February, this year, I would have been at the unit for 23 years in different roles.
Srikanth:
So, in Adelaide, what would be your favorite thing to do?
Georgette:
I love the beach. You might see I’m a bit more brown than you saw me last. The beaches are beautiful and then in winter, I really love hiking, bush walking through the hills. It’s lovely.
Srikanth:
So, you enjoy the best of both then!
Georgette:
Absolutely, I do.
(23:09)
Srikanth:
So, getting back to the biobank, you guys are not directly involved in the things like participant recruitment for the researchers, right? Are there a small number of projects where you do that too?
Georgette:
No. So, we’re involved in supporting the researchers, but we’re not involved in the research itself. For example, one of the services that we provide is that if someone’s going to put in an application for a grant, they’ll come to us and say what should we be looking at? And then we’ll go through the whole process of – have you got consent? Have you got ethics? Have you got this? So, we help them through the process, but we’re not in charge of that.
(24:03)
Srikanth:
Right. So, given that, the researchers are your so-called customers, right? So, those are the people whom you’re actually servicing. So, how do you work in publicizing your biobank to get more people to know what you do and how they can use your services?
Georgette:
Yeah, that’s actually a very good question, because it was a bit of a struggle to start with. No people don’t really understand what we do but what I would normally do (COVID unfortunately slowed things down a bit because you couldn’t see people face to face) is that I would do a road show twice a year. Once at the beginning of the year, and once made towards the end of the year. We are going through all the schools. I present what we do, I give little examples of the studies that we house, how we support them, and the services that we offer to researchers. We also run a research material management training course. So one of the things that we noticed was that there were poor naming conventions for management of samples, so one of the approaches that we took to start with, and I run this through my road shows, is a little simple half an hour training course for any new researchers like students, honors, Masters, Ph.D., and research stuff to pretty much get the hand the heads around what is the proper way of cataloging things. What to do, what not to do. The idea behind that is to ensure that they do the right thing from day one. That way we’re not and find ourselves in the same problem 2–3 years down the track. So, road shows are very important. We are resuming them again this year. I’ve got one in March coming up which I’m really excited about.
Srikanth:
Are these typically like individual sessions you do in different places?
Georgette:
It’s like a seminar series sort of thing. So, what I would normally do is that I would book a seminar room through the different schools on different days, and I’ll do an hour and a half session depending on the questions and how many people show up, how interested they are. So, we normally run maybe five or six in the first half and then again five or six in the second half. The turnout varies, generally our busiest time is the March because more people are coming in and studying at the university. Our mid to end is not as busy, but it still has a good turnout.
Srikanth:
Yeah, that’s a pretty interesting approach. Because the more you do such things, even though it’s more of general education that you’re trying to impart, it also directly or indirectly publicizes what you do for people to know that we exist.
Georgette:
Yes, we exist and then we support them. But one of the things that we have had good feedback on is that there have been a lot of different researchers able to collaborate with us like being the middleman. So, for example, there have been a couple of groups that have been after particular cell types or particular diseases or particular controls. They would reach out to us and say- “I am after this, I know you came and did a roadshow. Do you work with any of these particular samples?” And then I’ll be like yeah we do such and such research, and then they get in touch. And like you said, making researchers know that we’re there and what we do has opened the doors to a lot of researchers who didn’t know that the similar research was being done on a different campus or something like that. So, it’s been quite helpful.
Srikanth:
Right. Do you record these sessions and put it on your website or something like that?
Georgette:
No, but that’s actually a really good idea. I did record the research material management course. There’s a PowerPoint recording off that, but I haven’t actually thought about recording the roadshows. But I might actually do that.
Srikanth:
Yeah, I mean it is just free content, right? there’s not much effort in doing that. But then you put it on your website, it’s there for people to look at it throughout the year.
Georgette:
Yeah, that’s a great idea. Thank you so much.
(28:47)
Srikanth:
I had to ask you like what are the challenges that you face in your general biobanking operations? What top one or two things that would come to your mind?
Georgette:
Like you’ve mentioned before, we’re pretty lucky in the sense that funding is not a problem for us at the moment. The two main issues are – staffing and space. So right until mid last year, the biobank was just me. Angus Netting is the director. The biobank started falling under Angus’s role in 2015. But I didn’t have any support. We do local freezer audits as well as audits for the biobank, transfers, usual maintenance, helping and supporting researchers writing grants. All of that just fell under me. Luckily, from mid last year we have a biobank technical officer that supports me. So, staffing is a big issue.
The other issue is space. Luckily, the University of Adelaide has been very lucky in the sense of getting multiple or being funded multiple grants. So, there’s been quite a few increases in research groups, new schools or new institutes coming on board, which means that the demand for biobanking has increased immensely. We are running out of space to support our researchers, and that is a problem.
Srikanth:
Are you looking at the off-site storage? because if I remember, all your freezers are in the main campus right?
Georgette:
Yes, we are on the main campus. We are currently in the process of looking to have a purposely built facility off-site. But that’s in very early works. We don’t know exactly where that’s going to be or how big it’s going to be, but it will be purposely built for hopefully, like I said earlier -800 liquid nitrogen and processing.
(31:14)
Srikanth:
And any plans for certification for the biobank?
Georgette:
Yeah, so that’s actually one of the things that we discussed at ABNA this year with NATA. There are a lot of different aspects of our biobank that would be approved through the new ISO
including risk management. At the moment we’re not thinking of officially having it accredited, but what we’re done and what we always do is to ensure that our biobank meets the ISBER guidelines for biobanking. In some areas, we have gone above and beyond as you mentioned before, but we’re also trying to work towards the accreditation. So, we look at every single point of the ISO, and we try to have it to standard. So in the event, a particular researcher needs the facility to be accredited or if we decide that we want to be accredited, the work won’t be too much because we’re already working towards those standards.
(32:25)
Srikanth:
Nice. So, other than providing services to researchers, your main goal is to match the demand and supply, right? So, people who need specimens and people who have specimens, how do you do matchmaking? And the related point to that – one of the things others have been doing, like we saw in ABNA, people like the University of New South Wales who showed their specimen catalog that they had built using OpenSpecimen, will those kinds of tools be of use when you are finally online with OpenSpecimen?
Georgette:
Absolutely and that’s one of the features that I’m really looking forward to using from OpenSpecimen. So for the UNSW biobank, I really love the way that you guys have set up the catalog. It’s something that I really like to do. Like I said, at the moment people just contact me out of the blue and say ‘do you happen to have this?’, but if we actually have a catalog available to researchers, then it’s going to be a lot easier and more productive for the researchers.
Srikanth:
Yeah, it makes things easy to write grants. So, they don’t have to contact you and ask for 100 things when things are readily available online.
Georgette:
Yeah, absolutely I was really excited when I saw that feature on their website, and I’m like yeah that’s something that I will definitely be using.
Srikanth:
Right, so anything else that we miss talking about in terms of the biobank work before we move on to other things?
Georgette:
No, I don’t think so. We all know each biobank is different, they’re all special in their own different way. I think it is really important that researchers know the value of the samples. I mean not the values in the dollar value, but as in how important their values are to making a difference. It doesn’t necessarily have to be human samples, it could be plants, animals, it could be anything. But having a facility that can support them in improving their research and providing support and services I think it’s really crucial. It’ll be great to see more of this not only in Australia, but worldwide and collaborating amongst the researchers and biobanks is key.
(34:58)
Srikanth:
So, that brings up a good segue into what I wanted to talk about next, which is the value of the specimen. The value of the specimen is also kind of directly linked to what kind of data you have about the specimen, right? Because otherwise, it’s just meat in a freezer, unless you have good-quality data associated with that. So, how do you manage that? Especially given that you are not really in charge of collecting these specimens. Do you guide your researchers in terms of data collection, and minimum data points that they can collect?
Georgette:
Absolutely! We have a guideline of minimum information that researchers should obtain for each of the samples, and we provide these to all the researchers for the local freezers. I can’t enforce how much information they put in for the local contents however the fields that must be filled in for samples to be stored in the biobank, but we got mandatory fields that must be completed. When we do a transfer we ensure that all of them, at least minimum information should be filled in for our biobanking purposes. There are a lot of research groups out there that have the funding. So, a lot of local researchers might have only 1-2 staff, others might have 14-15 staff. So, some actually have the time and are able to dedicate someone to update the information for the samples, others not so much. We provide them with the backbone information, and it’s technically up to the research or the research groups to use that to their advantage. But in terms of biobanking, yes we have your data is only as good as you put in. So, you won’t be able to know as much of what you have unless you put the information in. We definitely have a template of minimum information that is required prior to storage.
Srikanth:
Great! And then as part of the package or the biobanking service that you provide, one of the services you also provide is that they get to use the central LIMS. It’s kind of a good deal for them. They don’t have to deal with their Excel sheets.
Georgette:
Exactly. So, when this was originally rolled out we went from – some groups that had no idea what they had in their freezers, some groups had yellow posted notes on their freezers, some had some printouts, others had Excel. So, there was a complete variety of cataloging or knowledge of what they had in their freezers. When we introduced cataloging into the LIMS as a policy, the majority of the researchers were incredibly grateful that they were able to have a system that they can import the data and update it and know exactly what they have.
(37:59)
Srikanth:
Right okay and that’s the biobanking stuff that you have been doing. The other thing that you have been very actively involved in is the ABNA. Can you give us an idea of what ABNA is? maybe start with the full form of ABNA, and then what’s your role and in general, what does ABNA do?
Georgette:
Sure. So ABNA is the Australasian Biospecimen Network Association. We are a non-for-profit organization. We support researchers that are actively involved in biospecimen banking. We have been around for 20 years this year, so make sure you come and celebrate. We run a yearly workshop or conference that normally runs for about 2-2.5 days. We’re slowly growing. Originally, it developed from ABN-Onc, (ABN oncology). It was very cancer focused. It slowly became more broad. It didn’t only include cancer it also included other human diseases and in the more recent years. We’ve been working to be a more inclusive society so that we also have biobanking, biospecimen science knowledge, and share that information amongst the different fields -human, animal, plant.
What we have found is that there are a lot of areas that we share in common but yet, we’re not aware of. So, you know we have things like ethics or consent on the human front, but you also have ethics and in some areas consent for animals. There’s also a consent for plants, depending on whether they’re native protected species. So, there are areas which spread across the different fields of the different specimens that we work closely to ensure that we’re all supported. One of the things that ABNA is really proud of is the networking and the collaboration. As you experienced last year, for example, we always have, I mean COVID put a bit of a downer, but we managed to have an online meeting, which was great. But the face-to-face interactions, the number of collaborations and publications that I have counted them out because of the networking between the different biobanks. ABNA works really strongly to ensure that Australasia all work together. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel. So, currently ABNA also has subcommittees where people are able to express their interest and work in areas that they really know about. We have a publication subcommittee, disaster recovery subcommittee etc. We have different areas or different resources that members would actually, use in their favor. It’s I think an amazing platform for collaboration, networking, improving biobanking, not reinventing the wheel, and using support and resources. So, it’s great, and this year is our 20th-anniversary celebration on the Gold Coast. We are at SeaWorld this year, so please feel free to come along again.
Srikanth:
Yeah, although there are more reasons to attend the conference. And you conveniently sidestep the fact that you are the vice president.
Georgette:
Oh yes, I forgot that I am currently the vice president and Cassandra Griffin is the president. This year in October when the conference is, I step up as president. So, I’ll be a bit busy. But I’m really looking forward to ABNA. The committee members are absolutely amazing to work with. We all have really great ideas to bring on. We have lots of members who contact us all the time with ideas and support. They’re a fantastic team, so although I’m a little bit scared, I’m really looking forward to it too
Srikanth:
And the conference is typically in October every year.
Georgette:
Yes. So, from the 18th into the 20th of October this year, it’s normally towards the end of October. At the Gold Coast, we are planning to have a really good program. Like I said before, being inclusive, introducing different areas. One of the feedback that we had from ABNA in WA in Perth last year was that they really enjoyed the fact that they were involved in the process, not really understanding that they were biobankers. So, we had um animal scientists or biospecimen scientists and animals as well as plants, and they would get up there and say I didn’t realize I was a biobanker. That really resonated with us, and it’s something that we’re definitely gonna you know improve and keep growing.
Srikanth:
Yeah, at a very basic level, probably anyone who has a freezer and specimen is a biobank.
Georgette:
Correct, but when you think biobanking people just think of a big room with a freezer. If you’re particularly looking for a study of a particular disease or anything that you’re collecting samples for, you are a biobank. It’s really exciting to see people understand what they’re doing and how it can all be part of this family. I suppose that we can all help each other.
Srikanth:
At the Perth conference, one of the most interesting sessions that I attended was the one on Koalas. I don’t know whether I’m pronouncing it right.
Georgette:
Koalas yes!
Srikanth:
Yeah, very interesting. You know different things that otherwise you don’t see in your normal day-to-day work.
Georgette:
Exactly. I have learned so much from other areas of research that I wouldn’t have even thought of. So, it’s fascinating.
(45:23)
Srikanth:
Sure so that pretty much brings us to the end of the interview. I do plan to get in touch with you again next year, maybe once you have a year full of using OpenSpecimen, we can talk in more detail about how you are doing with OpenSpecimen.
About OpenSpecimen, recently you decided to start using it. Since you do not really live with OpenSpecimen I will not go into that in detail, but in general from an IT infrastructure point of view, a question that I had was – what was the process you went through? If I remember correctly, you went through a tender process and so how did you go about doing that? If someone is planning to do something similar, what would you tell them?
Georgette:
The first thing you need to do is to really understand what you’re going to use the LIMS for.
- Will the LIMS be used for a biobank alone or is it going to be used university-wide. Like we’re using it university-wide as well as the biobank.
- Understanding what you want to get out of the LIMS – do you just want to have a freezer catalog or do you also want to have something that will let you track the workflow of a particular sample, do you want to know what samples were generated from what parent?
- Understanding what your budget is.
So, there are a lot of different LIMS out there, the prices are completely different, their offers of maintenance on a yearly basis are also completely different. So work out how much money you’re able to spend, what you’re really after.
When we went out to tender we had particular categories that needed to be addressed. Each of the applicants would address those points. We then had a panel and I think that might have been 10 of us where we all then read through the application to see what suited us and what didn’t. The university provides you with a scoring sheet. So, each particular category had a value. We all gave it a value. Then we pretty much went through the process of who was the top and who you would not even look at. Then we went back to those particular vendors and said, “Look, I really like this feature. I see that you don’t have this feature. You know, talking to the vendors is absolutely important. I remember I chatted to you. You were able to give us a demo which was incredibly helpful. It’s just understanding what you’re after and asking the questions is key. You guys answered so many questions for us, and you were able to give us a demo of what we would look like. So, that’s really key, understanding what you want from the LIMS, how you want to use it, and the amount of money that you’re willing to spend upfront and on a yearly basis. Make sure you have particular categories of questions and also ask the vendors the questions that you’re after.
Srikanth:
Two quick questions on that – so how long did the process take and did you do any site visits to other centers to look at what they do and their IT infrastructures?
Georgette:
Well, during COVID we didn’t physically do site visits, but through ABNA, we actually have a lot of collaborations with different banks throughout Australia. It was pretty much of – what system to use? What do you like about it? What do you recommend? What don’t you recommend? That’s actually a very good point there Sri. If you like a particular product, go out to sites. if you can’t physically go to sites, contact them and find out how they’re using it, and whether they’re happy with the system. You know what’s the pros and what’s the cons. So, that’s pretty much what we did once we narrowed down the applicants. We then contacted the different groups and said -I know you use this, what do you think of it? Nothing is better than actual word of mouth and experience.
Srikanth:
Yeah, it’s you know the reference checks that you do. Also, it’s not just the software that you’re behind right, you also need to look at the kind of support and things like that.
Georgette:
That makes a world of a difference. You might be stuck doing something or something doesn’t work if you’re at the end of an email at the end of a call I’m answering and supporting the researcher that changes everything.
Srikanth:
Absolutely, so that’s pretty much that I wanted to cover, thank you. Anything that you think that we missed?
Georgette:
I think you’ve covered everything and like you said, I would love to have a chat with you once we’ve actually gone live with OpenSpecimen and see how we go, but I’m only really looking forward to it.
Srikanth:
Sounds good. Thanks, Georgette, for giving us this time. As I said, the goal of this podcast is not really around talking about OpenSpecimen or its features but more educational in the biobanking world. Especially because you know every biobank is different, and then try to take out the uniqueness of those biobanks and help others understand what you’re doing. Maybe there are a couple of things from which people can get inspired, and try to improve their own processes, so it was really useful from that point of view.
Georgette:
Absolutely and like I say, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. If someone’s already done something, collaborate with them. That’s what we’re here for. Work together, give them ideas, it’s great. So, I really like this podcast that you guys are doing, and thank you so much for asking me to be a part of it.