BBMRI.at recently hosted successful consortium meeting in Graz
BBMRI.at recently brought together its Management Committee (MC) to a meeting in Graz, where discussions on strategic topics, legal frameworks, and biobanking consent practices were disussed.
On 21 November, BBMRI.at held a Managemen Comittee (MC) Meeting in Graz. It was hosted by the BBMRI.at coordination (from Med Uni Graz) at the Center for Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Medicine (ZWT) where BBMRI.at, BBMRI-ERIC, and Biobank Graz are located. The event brought together members of the Management Committee (consisting of the Work Package Leaders and the Local Biobank Coordinators) as well as many representatives from the BBMRI.at team.
The meeting’s agenda included strategic discussions on the upcoming BBMRI-ERIC Work Programme for 2025-2027 and preperations for the BBMRI.at annual meeting which will be held in January 2025.
The BBMRI-ERIC Work Programme 2025-2027 builds on the BBMRI-ERIC 10-Year Roadmap which contains important strategic directions to achieving the BBMRI vision “Biobanking for a Healthier World”. One of the directions is for example emphasizing the integration of health research across human, animal, and environmental domains. Another one, the advancing of digital transformation to ensure high-quality, purpose-driven research data. BBMRI.at discussed its contribution as National Node to the BBMRI-ERIC 3-year work program. In several areas BBMRI.at has a lot of expertise and experiences. The second major agenda point at the BBMRI.at MC Meeting was an engaging workshop by BBMRI.at’s Work Package 2 (led by University of Vienna), focusing on the topic “Understanding Broad Consent in Biobanking”. The workshop explored different consent models in biobanking, examining their respective advantages and disadvantages.
Moreover, they explored different legal acts namely the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Gouvernance Act (DGA) and the upcoming European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation – as well as the requirements for consents and relevance for biobanks in the Austrian (legal) context. The workshop was followed by a discussion on informed consent practices within the consortium’s biobanks.
The meeting concluded with a review of BBMRI.at’s activities and communication strategies, highlighting success stories and providing an outlook on future initiatives.
