Rationale

Rationale

Biobank software needs

Biological resources, such as cells, tissues or biomolecules are considered as the essential raw
material for the advancement of biotechnology, human health, and for research and development
in life sciences. Every sample in a collection includes attached data on factors such as health
status, nutrition, lifestyle, and environmental exposure. Following the rapid progress in omics-
research also a wide range of high-throughput data will be attached to samples, extending the
data space related to a sample collection. The handling of samples (sample management in a
biobank and LIMS for downstream analysis) and related data is the main tasks of a biobanking
software solution.

For the fast growing field of biobanking several commercial software solutions are upcoming,
however they mostly cover only specific aspects and use proprietary data schemas, which
leads to a fragmented and heterogeneous software landscape. An open-source approach can
face this challenge and guarantee sustainability and data harmonisation, but most of the open-
source software tools cannot be used without significant effort for installation, configuration and
maintenance and lack documentation for non-IT experts.