Increasing Availability Control of Human Biological Samples Using a Mobile Management System

Abstract

Biobanks and biorepositories present major challenges in managing, storing and making available large amounts of samples and associated information. The ability to share these samples is an important issue to improve research using human biological samples. A systematic review of the literature on information management of biobanks and biorepositories provided a wealth of knowledge and stimulated a proposal for a system to support its management process. The SIGIBio (Biobank and Biorepository Information Management Support System) was defined and developed to manage these samples considering the complex treatment of these data, in a mobile system. It features open up possibilities for organizations and researchers to access and share biobank and bio-repositories samples. The SIGIBio system was described in terms of requirements, stages of development, scenarios and technical aspects. The first version of SIGIBio was presented to researchers and a usability test was performed to confirm its applicability and interface aspects. In the future, SIGIBio will be an open and free system that can be adopted by different researchers and organizations.