My institution, Fred Hutch, is just starting implementation of OpenSpecimen across our enterprise. Once OpenSpecimen is fully available to use by any active laboratories and biobanks, we want to use the tool for legacy biobanks. Currently, we are exploring an institutional decision making framework for managing electronic data, specimens, or paper records that remain after a faculty member departs, retires or loses funding for a particular resource, after the period of required retention. We are interested in learning how other institutions manage and make decisions around these “legacy resources”.
Many of these legacy biobanks are on old or unsupported specimen data management tools, and we feel that migrating these biobanks to OpenSpecimen would make them more accessible. If you use OpenSpecimen to manage your legacy biobanks or if you have guidelines, policies, or established criteria that you use to maintain legacy resources at your institution, and are willing to share or interested in joining a conversation around, please let me know.