Accreditation of Biobanking

Biobanks may hold millions of biological samples – including those from humans, animals, plants, or microbes.  The purpose of these are mainly to help the scientific community to develop everything from crop production to personalized medicine. Biobanks vary widely in terms of the kinds of biological material they hold, the activities they undertake, the services they provide, and their location, size, and structure.

INAB offers accreditation of biobanks to the standard, EN ISO 20387:2018 “Biotechnology – Biobanking – general requirements for biobanks”, which specifies general requirements for the competence, impartiality and consistent operation of biobanks including quality control requirements to ensure that biological material and data collections are produced and maintained appropriately. This standard is applicable to all organisations performing biobanking, including biobanking of biological material from multicellular organisms (e.g. human, animal, fungus and plant) and microorganisms for research and development. It does not apply to biological material intended for food/feed production, laboratories undertaking analysis for food/feed production, and/or therapeutic use.

The accreditation process for biobanking will allow assessments of the specific needs of individual biobanks and the activities they perform, including acquisition, analysis, collection, data management, distribution, preparation, preservation, and testing.

INAB Accreditation Symbol

The Irish National Accreditation Board strongly mandates accredited organisations to use the accreditation symbol on their reports or certificates.

The accreditation symbol, ownership of which is vested in INAB, is a combination of the Board’s logo in association with the registration number and the accreditation standard. Reference is also made to the organisation’s scope of accreditation.

The use of the symbol is subject to strict criteria laid down in the INAB R1 Regulations.