Ayat Salman
Mcgill University
Challenges of Biobanking in Primary Care: Policies and Harmonization
Salman, Ayat MSc., Lazaris, Anthoula PhD, Metrakos, Peter MD, Bartlett, Gillian PhD.
Less than 1% of the population is seen in university based hospitals while most of the population seeking medical care are seen in a primary healthcare setting. Primary care (PC) fills a huge gap between the general healthy population and the university teaching hospital in provision of healthcare services. With standardized governance planning, sharing and access policies specific for biobanks, the roadblock to samples/ data have been lifted, leading to increased usage of specimens/data. Patients seeking medical care in a primary setting present with symptoms that do not always render towards diagnosis. However, having a biobank in PC is key in studying trends, susceptibilities to disease and obtaining population data. Nonetheless, it can provide some reliable assessment of lifestyle, environmental and genetic factors as determinants of chronic disease. But, the challenges we face in a PC biobank in Quebec are of multiple facets. The first facet relates to the nature and organizational aspect such as patient sampling (population), governance and the type of collections (data and biospecimen) in a PC setting. The other facet relates to the current Canadian and provincial regulatory landscape around biobanks and its application in the context of PC. How do we tackle these challenges to ensure use and sharing of data/biospecimen that will benefit the patient and researchers? The population in PC is diverse and sampling is challenging. What type of data/biospecimen do we collect with different populations? We begin by providing an overview of the Canadian and provincial regulatory landscapes and the difficulties associated with our challenges.
