#EBW26 Previews: 6D: Patient-centric biobanking: Strategies for engagement and participation
This session spotlights patients as experts-by-experience driving innovative research and establishing biobanks that address emerging health needs. It explores best practices for making biobank-based research accessible and impactful, empowering diverse communities and fostering meaningful, sustained citizen engagement to advance inclusive and patient-centered health innovation.
Speakers included in this session:
- Eric Vermeulen – Biobanking for long covid
- Arthur Haerinck – Stakeholder engagement in European cancer research biobanking: preliminary insights from a scoping review
- Yue Zhao – Patient-engaged surgical oncology biobanking as a platform for translational precision oncology
- Alexia Morato -Japson – Inclusive consent strategies across donor life stages in biobanking
This session will be chaired by:
Prof. Dr. Elke Smits
Prof. Dr. Elke Smits is Chief Science & Innovation Officer at Antwerp University Hospital (UZA) and Liaison Officer at the Clinical Research Center Antwerp (CRC Antwerp, UZA and UAntwerp). She serves as President of BBMRI.be and Ambassador of ESBB, and is dedicated to advancing biobanking, international collaboration, quality standards and patient engagement to strengthen biomedical research and clinical innovation.
Dr. Eric Vermeulen
Dr. Vermeulen works for a patient organisation, PostCovid NL, in The Netherlands. He also works for the Central Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects and for the NMCB biobank. He is a nurse and sociologist.
He chairs the BBMRI.ERIC stakeholder forum and the Health RI Patient and Public Advisory Council.
Session details:
- Date: Thursday 21 May
- Time: 9:00 – 10:30