Engaging citizens in biobanking – activities by BBMRI.at and biobank partners

What happens in the hospital and what with blood taken or tissue removed? What is a biobank? What does a pathology laboratory do?

Since many years, BBMRI.at – together Med Uni Graz’s Institute of Pathology – offers hands-on workshops for biobanking and pathology to children at different ages ranging.

Children aged 3 to 13 years can become researchers, biobankers and pathologists and experience certain steps along the path from the patient to a new medication. BBMRI.at gives these workshops for kindergartens, primary and high schools.

On a regular basis BBMRI.at offers the workshops in collaboration with the Kids University at Graz where they can be booked.

During the Austrian event “Long Night of Research”, which takes place every two years,
BBMRI.at partners attract hundreds of visitors and bring biobanks and their work closer to the public.

At the Medical University of Graz (MedCampus and Center for Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Medicine (ZWT), BBMRI.at offers hands-on stations and guided biobank tours. The stations inspire visitors to learn about biobanks and perform themselves typical laboratory work associated with biobanking, like handling and microscoping tissue and blood samples.

To get an impression, watch the short video of the “Long Night of Research” 2022:

In several videos and media reports, BBMRI.at team members and biobank partners explain how biobanks work, why they are relevant and how biobanks support research & development and contribute to the advancement of personalized medicine.

Examples are:

During the past years BBMRI.at has conducted several interviews with citizens and patients as well as round table discussions so called Citizen Expert Panels. Citizen Expert Panels are  of citizens and biobanking experts on various biobanking topics. They combine providing and gaining information to and from participants. At the beginning biobanking experts provide basic information about biobanking and related issues, which are available to answer participants’ questions. Afterwards participants discuss the topics and try to reduce the topics to a common denominator. Final outcome should be a consensur protocol. Main topic of the citizen expert panels are biobank in general and topics that come along with it, such as data protection and the question, if/how to deal with results, profits and risks arising from biobank-based research & development.