AUSTRALASIAN BIOSPECIMEN NETWORK ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
The 17 th Annual Conference of the Australasian Biospecimen Network Association (ABNA) was held in Cairns in October, with this year’s focus being all about looking to- ward the future. For biobanking, this means developing an expansive and sustainable operational model, that also accounts for disaster recovery planning; strengthen- ing ties between the global net- work of biobanks via the sharing of infrastructure and specimens; and ensuring the quality of all specimens stored in the banks and issued for research. Our very own Ussha Pillai, Senior Tumour Bank Officer, pre- sented some of her work to confer- ence delegates. One of Ussha’s areas of focus this past year has
been data linkage, which has been part of a collaborative pro- ject working with other biobanks from the greater Sydney region and funded by the Cancer Insti- tute NSW. Data linkage involves bringing together information from a host of different sources to fill in any gaps there may be in local hospital medical records. This in turn, provides researchers with a richer dataset to work from and allows them to draw more accurate conclusions from their results. The major benefit that comes from collaborative events such as this are the relationships that are built between industry members who have varied experi- ence and knowledge; as it is through the sharing of these dif-
ferences in expertise that we can continue to improve and stream- line biobanking as a whole.
Ussha Pillai with her poster presentation about data linkage at the ABNA conference.
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