#EBW26 Previews: 6C: Ensuring excellence: Elevating data quality in biobanking
This session explores advanced methods for assessing and improving the quality of biobank data. Participants will learn about frameworks for data capture, quality metrics and metadata that ensure scientific reliability. Through examples and new tools, attendees will gain practical insights to prevent errors, enhance reproducibility and drive impactful data-driven medical research.
Highlight Speaker: Carmen Ortega-Sabater – Building an interoperable brain metastasis data infrastructure: The RENACER Network Experience
Bio: With a background in Molecular Oncology and Applied Mathematics, Carmen Ortega-Sabater is currently working as a Clinical Data Manager at the CNIO Biobank, focused on Spain’s Brain Metastasis Network (RENACER). She is interested in secure data sharing frameworks such as the EHDS, ethical patient-rights regulation, patient engagement and clinical research infrastructures connecting all stakeholders.
Abstract: RENACER is a multidisciplinary network of 22 hospitals, researchers and biobanks, led by CNIO Biobank joining efforts to address brain metastasis resistance, mortality and quality-of-life. Through a living cohort of more than 600 patients, we integrate fresh tumour tissue, liquid biopsies, molecular profiling, MRI data and longitudinal clinical follow‑up. It has enabled the implementation of a robust data workflow supported by a centralised LIMS and REDCap platform, GDPR‑compliance, role‑based access and version and quality control across more than 1,200 harmonised variables. RENACER provides a unique repository that supports responsible data sharing, translational research and alignment with emerging European research frameworks.
Speakers included in this session:
- Aisha Al-Khinji – A reproducible framework for creating validated health indicators from Middle Eastern biobank data
- Julian Dörenberg – From samples to data: A proficiency test concept for data quality in biobanking networks
This session will be chaired by:
Dr. Teresa Escámez Martinez
Dr. Escámez Martinez holds a PhD in Biology with a master’s in Biobanking and a degree in Quality Auditing. She has been Head of the Biobank Platform at IMIB since 2013 and is the former QM lead for BBMRI.es in the BBMRI-ERIC Quality Management Group.
Currently, she coordinates the Spanish Biobank Hub and is National Node Director of the Spanish National Node in BBMRI-ERIC.
Prof. Agnieszka Matera-Witkiewicz
Prof. Agnieszka Matera-Witkiewicz is the ESBB Vice-President and Head of WMU Regional Digital Medicine Centre and WMU Biobank – the first integrated biobank in Poland with an ISO 9001 certificate and the first international accreditation ISO 20387 in Poland.
She is the BBMRI.pl QM leader, head of the Polish Committee for Standardization TC Biotechnology, an ISO Expert TC Biotechnology in WG2 Biobanks and Bioresource and OECD VLRI WG Polish Expert nominated by the Ministry of Science. She is the co-author of Quality Standards for Polish Biobanks Handbook– national standards for biobanking and Quality Handbook for Biobanks with NNs of BBMRI-ERIC endorsement.
Session details:
- Date: Thursday 21 May
- Time: 9:00 – 10:30