Next generation biobanks

Biobanks have a long tradition of being mere repositories of cells and tissues. Their best use is in retrospective studies, where stored tissues and cells can be used to address scientific questions, but this paradigm has been changing lately. Biobanks need to inhabit a different role in the scientific process. In fact the information contained in biobanks can fuel the scientific reasoning itself more than just accompanying with management of specimens and data. We present a biobank architecture based on our product Health Intelligence Platform (HIP) that supports these requirements. We describe a way to support scientific reasoning directly with HIP and integrate sample management in a way that it contributes to scientific reasoning and outcome.