By Lisa B Miranda, President and Chief Executive Officer, Biobusiness Consulting Incorporated
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A: Agile
Biobanking.
Agile
biobanking is the idea of creating operations that can respond to what the customer and market needs in real time. And when project requirements shift making the necessary refinements reasonably quickly.
So, let’s return to the
biobanks who are thriving. What do they do exactly?
They proactively plan and prioritize their collections and let the end user requirements drive collections (in line with their mission of course) - before they bank.
1. Utilization specific strategic planning: Before these
biobanks commit to any collections, products and/or services, they dedicate a portion of their strategic planning to substantiate the market need for the types of samples and services they can offer.
2. Voice of customer driven collections: They meet with potential customers early on to determine sample requirements (e.g. type, format, processing needs, amount, etc.) and downstream targets- so they can be sure the sample is “fit-for-purpose”.
3. Secured customers with funded contracts: They take a project based costing approach. They create a transparent yet relatively expeditious process to confirm the contract is finalized and the funding is secure - before they begin any dedicated collection.
4. Real time evidence based refinements to projects: Working closely with their customers, they typically pilot a percentage of the samples upfront - making sure that the samples pass proficiency measures and are of sufficient quality. Then as appropriate refine their sample methodologies.
5. Timely capture and reporting of outcome and utilization data: They collect data on the project outcomes to demonstrate impact of the
bioresource. They debrief on lessons learned and tweak their approach if needed.
How does this approach help ensure
sustainability?
Agile
biobanking ensures that all specimens collected have a respective end user and are utilized in a reasonable timeframe - so impact can be measured. This fulfills a
biobank’s utilization mission. It makes certain that every project has a business case to support it: a committed budget, a guaranteed funding source and a mechanism for bringing in revenue. This assured return on investment increases the likelihood of obtaining additional stakeholder funding later on.
The approach allows the
biobank to preserve and maximize its resources and better understand its needs going forward. Understanding what end users (e.g. academic, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostic and
biotech companies) need to fulfill their R&D requirements makes any collection more valuable and more likely to be utilized in a relevant, meaningful way.
The agile
biobanking approach is consistent with an insight I shared in an expert column in Biopreservation and
Biobanking in 2010 (regarding challenges/opportunities for
biobanks in the next 3-5 years?): “The ability for
Biobanks to embrace the changing perspective of viewing the
biospecimen as a potential work product and provide focus on the life cycle and related process chain and related pipeline planning will be hugely beneficial.”
How can you help apply these lessons?
This October, I’ll be giving a workshop in Boston on
biobank business planning - focused on strategic and
sustainable development.
In the morning workshop we’ll dig deeper into other success factors, lessons learned and peer case studies - which serves as a primer for the afternoon session. The afternoon
biobank business planning boot camp is designed to be interactive to allow participants to work through a problem they are dealing with in real time. The approach will be similar to one I used for a
biobank business plan boot camp in Switzerland, where a group of Core Directors worked together as a sounding board. They left with peer based experiential knowledge that they could put to work for their organization. This approach proved extremely fruitful. If this opportunity interests you, I encourage you to register for the upcoming workshop.
About the Author:
Lisa Miranda is President & Chief Executive Officer of Biobusiness Consulting Incorporated, a biobanking and biotechnology commercialization advisory with global reach based in the Greater Boston Area. She has 25 years of experience, complimented with 14 years of higher education including nine years of graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania. She began her career in clinical care and community based research and then moved to clinical and epidemiology research. She spent over 14 years in research at the University of Pennsylvania conducting clinical and investigator initiated trials to bring new drugs and clinical therapies to market, testing and helping develop emerging medical/surgical technologies, diagnostic devices and evaluating novel biotechniques. In 2005 she launched and directed her first core facility a biospecimen resource for UPENN called TTAB. Recruited for her first consulting job in 2007 as a contractor for the United States National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute’s Biorepositories and Biospecimens Research Branch (BBRB), she expanded her consulting practice full time in 2008. She is known worldwide as a biobanking and clinical research subject matter expert; much of her work focuses on biobank business planning, strategic development of biospecimen research applications and biotechnology commercialization. Prior biobanking and biotechnology commercialization Executive roles have included Vice President, Strategy and Business Development for MEMS based Biotechnology Company Bluechiip, Vice President, Strategic Alliances and International Biobank Relations, Trans-Hit Biomarkers, and Technical Director, Tumor Tissue and Biospecimen Bank Core Facility, UPENN). For more information email Lisa at lisabmiranda@biobusinessconsulting.com Download her 2014 podcast on the future of biobanking. 
