Data Sharing Solutions for Biobanks for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a novel illness, which is not fully understood. Whether an individual has traveled outside their respective country or never left their community, COVID-19 is a highly contagious illness, which can result in high death rates. Biobanks will play a role in providing tools to examine data from those receiving treatment along with reviewing the current and long treatment outcomes associated with this novel coronavirus disease. A diverse, global network made up of laboratory scientists, clinical researchers, epidemiologists, data science teams, physicians, and so on must have a standardized, collaborative, virtual biobanking solution to share clinical expertise and evidence-based solutions. This virtual biobank must be centrally managed to ensure standardized quality assurance and quality control efforts. Virtual biobanks will eliminate the need to transport samples between two locations for a specific study, minimizing the risk of contamination. It is necessary for virtual biobanks to upload imaging data from those patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Standardized, collected information will be essential in the area of discovery and validation of disease markers as well as novel therapeutic strategies. It is essential for biobanks to collect COVID-19 specimens along with corresponding clinical and demographic data from COVID-19 diagnostic testing. Because COVID-19 is an acute respiratory illness, proper collection procedures must be in place to collect respiratory samples for biobanking purposes. A preconfigured purpose-built COVID-19 Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is an efficient tool to seamlessly manage a data sharing network. Data entered into LIMS will be beneficial in designing much needed clinical trials to address any unmet needs to better address clinical treatment and outcomes. The partners or entities associated with the COVID-19 data sharing network will be able to effectively communicate, view data, and images associated with their respective research interest to advance COVID-19 research and data driven, clinical care.

Digital Management Systems in Academic Health Sciences Laboratories: A Scoping Review

“…Real-time communication makes it possible, for example, that inventory checks, equipment scheduling, and data verification of an animal colony be performed while in transit. Multicenter studies can share data in real-time, as recently observed in the fast development studies of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 since 2020, relying heavily on technological development and efficient data management [ 34 ].…”

Ethical Challenges in COVID-19 Biospecimen Research

“…Institutional review boards must review biospecimen research protocols for data protection strategies that ensure protection of identity of participants and reduce risk of re-identification, such as proper consenting procedures, data use agreements, technology security, compliance with regulatory guidelines (such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and processes for establishing ownership or custodianship of biospecimens guided by regulations or best practices. 3,15,[39][40][41][42][43] The need to minimize risks of exploitation of protected and vulnerable groups who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 does not mean excluding these groups from COVID-19 biospecimen research. Coronavirus disease 2019 has impacted minority and economically disadvantaged communities to a greater extent than more affluent and/or White communities.…”

“…Ongoing discourse in the biorepository and biospecimens literature captures a variety of ethical and regulatory concerns distinct to pandemic biospecimens research including: donor vulnerability at the time of collection, potential disruption of already overwhelmed clinical institutions, laboratory biosafety, the need for large and harmonized data specimen collection and data sharing, and the sustainability of use once the pandemic subsides. [2][3][4][5] In this article, we emphasize how ethical and practical challenges of COVID-19 biospecimen research appear from the perspective of those involved in human subjects research protection, and we consider strategies to manage these challenges for those involved in biorepository oversight.…”

Establishment of primary health information in the COVID-19 outbreak: A cross-sectional study of population awareness of self-testing

“…In addition, the establishment of basic health information can help identify problems in primary care, including the state of health awareness of the population and the construction of primary medical care, among other dimensions [ 22 , 23 ]. The centralized reflection of individual health status also plays a vital role in excluding suspected cases of COVID-19 among the primary population [ 24 , 25 ].…”