Columbia University has been using OpenSpecimen for many years now. In recent years, we made significant additions to the OpenSpecimen implementation:
- Support for eConsents to collect consents from patients via emails and text messages
- Implementation of customized workflows to save time and data entry quality
- Integration with box scanners
- Integration with automated freezers
Here is a recent article published on the CUMC website which gives an in-depth look into their biobank operations and success.
"At the beginning of 2020, Columbia University Irving Medical Center was getting ready to open its first, centralized biobank.
Biobanks—collections of blood and tissue from patients—have proven essential for understanding human disease and developing new treatments. Over the past few decades, Columbia researchers have built several large biobanks, usually focused on specific diseases, that together hold 1.3 million samples from more than 100,000 individuals.
“These resources have been incredibly valuable, but only accessible to a limited group of researchers,” says Muredach Reilly, vice dean for clinical and translational research at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. With a centralized biobank, however, samples would be available to a wider range of researchers, accelerating discovery today and safeguarding these resources for decades of biomedical research.
But then the pandemic hit."
Read more here: https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/columbia-biobank-expansion-set-pay-dividends