Dataset Information

Access policies in biobank research: what criteria do they include and how publicly available are they? A cross-sectional study.

ABSTRACT: Access policies of biobanks specify the governance of sample and data sharing. Basic guidance on relevant access criteria exists, but so far little is known about their public availability and what criteria for access and prioritization they actually include. Access policies were gathered by hand searching the websites of biobanks identified via registries (eg, BBMRI and P3G), and by additional search strategies. Criteria for access and prioritization were synthesized by thematic analysis. Of 523 biobank websites screened, 9% included a publicly available access policy. With all applied search strategies, we finally retrieved 74 access policies. Thematic analysis resulted in 62 different access criteria in three main categories: (a) scientific quality, (b) value and (c) ethical soundness. 'Scientific quality' criteria were mentioned in 70% of all policies, 'value' criteria in 33% and 'ethical soundness' criteria in 73%. Criteria for prioritization were specified in 27% of all policies. Access policies differed broadly in number, specification and operationalization of the included access criteria. In order to make biobank research more effective, efficient and trustworthy, access policies should be more available to the public. Furthermore, access policies should aim for precise and more harmonized wording of access criteria. From a public and governance perspective, the issue of how to prioritize access to scarce samples should form part of access policies.

SUBMITTER: Langhof H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5315509 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Access policies in biobank research: what criteria do they include and how publicly available are they? A cross-sectional study.

Langhof Holger H Kahrass Hannes H Sievers Sören S Strech Daniel D

European journal of human genetics : EJHG 20161221 3

Access policies of biobanks specify the governance of sample and data sharing. Basic guidance on relevant access criteria exists, but so far little is known about their public availability and what criteria for access and prioritization they actually include. Access policies were gathered by hand searching the websites of biobanks identified via registries (eg, BBMRI and P3G), and by additional search strategies. Criteria for access and prioritization were synthesized by thematic analysis. Of 52 ...[more]

PMID: 28000694

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Project description:BackgroundThe promises of improved health care and health research through data-intensive applications rely on a growing amount of health data. At the core of large-scale data integration efforts, clinical data warehouses (CDW) are also responsible for data governance, managing data access and (re)use. As the complexity of the data flow increases, greater transparency and standardization of criteria and procedures are required in order to maintain objective oversight and control. Therefore, the development of practice oriented and evidence-based policies is crucial. This study assessed the spectrum of data access and use criteria and procedures in clinical data warehouses governance internationally.MethodsWe performed a systematic review of (a) the published scientific literature on CDW and (b) publicly available information on CDW data access, e.g., data access policies. A qualitative thematic analysis was applied to all included literature and policies.ResultsTwenty-three scientific publications and one policy document were included in the final analysis. The qualitative analysis led to a final set of three main thematic categories: (1) requirements, including recipient requirements, reuse requirements, and formal requirements; (2) structures and processes, including review bodies and review values; and (3) access, including access limitations.ConclusionsThe description of data access and use governance in the scientific literature is characterized by a high level of heterogeneity and ambiguity. In practice, this might limit the effective data sharing needed to fulfil the high expectations of data-intensive approaches in medical research and health care. The lack of publicly available information on access policies conflicts with ethical requirements linked to principles of transparency and accountability. CDW should publicly disclose by whom and under which conditions data can be accessed, and provide designated governance structures and policies to increase transparency on data access. The results of this review may contribute to the development of practice-oriented minimal standards for the governance of data access, which could also result in a stronger harmonization, efficiency, and effectiveness of CDW.

Project description:BACKGROUND: The criteria for choosing relevant cell lines among a vast panel of available intestinal-derived lines exhibiting a wide range of functional properties are still ill-defined. The objective of this study was, therefore, to establish objective criteria for choosing relevant cell lines to assess their appropriateness as tumor models as well as for drug absorption studies. RESULTS: We made use of publicly available expression signatures and cell based functional assays to delineate differences between various intestinal colon carcinoma cell lines and normal intestinal epithelium. We have compared a panel of intestinal cell lines with patient-derived normal and tumor epithelium and classified them according to traits relating to oncogenic pathway activity, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and stemness, migratory properties, proliferative activity, transporter expression profiles and chemosensitivity. For example, SW480 represent an EMT-high, migratory phenotype and scored highest in terms of signatures associated to worse overall survival and higher risk of recurrence based on patient derived databases. On the other hand, differentiated HT29 and T84 cells showed gene expression patterns closest to tumor bulk derived cells. Regarding drug absorption, we confirmed that differentiated Caco-2 cells are the model of choice for active uptake studies in the small intestine. Regarding chemosensitivity we were unable to confirm a recently proposed association of chemo-resistance with EMT traits. However, a novel signature was identified through mining of NCI60 GI50 values that allowed to rank the panel of intestinal cell lines according to their drug responsiveness to commonly used chemotherapeutics. CONCLUSIONS: This study presents a straightforward strategy to exploit publicly available gene expression data to guide the choice of cell-based models. While this approach does not overcome the major limitations of such models, introducing a rank order of selected features may allow selecting model cell lines that are more adapted and pertinent to the addressed biological question.

Project description:BackgroundAround the world government agencies responsible for the selection and reimbursement of prescribed medicines and other health technologies are considering how best to bring community preferences into their decision making. In particular, community views about the distribution or equity of funding across the population. These official committees and agencies often have access to the best available and latest evidence on clinical effectiveness, safety and cost from large clinical trials and population-based studies. All too often they do not have access to high quality evidence about community views. We therefore, conducted a large and representative population-based survey in Australia to determine what community members think about the factors that do and should influence government spending on prescribed medicines.MethodsA choice-based survey was designed to elicit the importance of individual criteria when considering the equity of government spending on prescribed medicines. A representative sample of 3080 adult Australians completed the survey by allocating a hypothetical budget to different combinations of money spent on two patient populations. Societal preferences were inferred from absolute majority responses i.e. populations with more than 50% of respondents' allocation for a particular allocation criterion.ResultsThis study shows that, all else being equal, severity of disease, diseases for which there is no alternative treatment available on the government formulary, diseases that affect patients who are not financially well off, and life-style unrelated diseases are supported by the public as resource allocation criteria. Where 'all else is not equal', participants allocated more resources to the patient population that gained considerable improvement in health and fewer resources to those that gained little improvement in health. This result held under all scenarios except for 'end-of-life treatments'. Responses to cost (and corresponding number of patients treated) trade-off scenarios indicated a significant reduction in the proportion of respondents choosing to divide resources equally and a shift in preference towards devoting resources to the population that were more costly to treat for all criteria with the exception of severity of disease.ConclusionsThe general public have clear views on what's fair in terms of government spending on prescribed medicines. In addition to supporting the application of the 'rule of rescue', important considerations for government spending included the severity of disease being treated, diseases for which there is no alternative treatment available on the government formulary, diseases that affect patients who are not financially well off and life-style unrelated diseases. This study shows that the general public are willing to share their views on what constitutes an equitable allocation of the government's drug budget. The challenge remains to how best to consider those views alongside clinical and economic considerations.

Dataset Information

Access policies in biobank research: what criteria do they include and how publicly available are they? A cross-sectional study.

Publications

Access policies in biobank research: what criteria do they include and how publicly available are they? A cross-sectional study.

Similar Datasets

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