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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.
Sec. Regulatory Science
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1481891
This article is part of the Research Topic Regulatory Science and Meta Science as Components of Regulation of Medical Products and Practices View all 5 articles

Biobanks and Data Interoperability in Latin America: Engendering High-Quality Evidence for the Global Research Ecosystem

Provisionally accepted
Erick Valdés Erick Valdés *Juan Alberto Lecaros Juan Alberto Lecaros
  • Institute of Sciences and Innovation in Medicine, Faculty of German Clinical Medicine, University of Development, Santiago, Chile

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Currently, each biobank in Latin America operates with its own set of standards for database creation and management, resulting in a lack of regional and international interoperability.Furthermore, regulations concerning data protection, curation, and the transfer of biological samples and associated data vary significantly from country to country, by complicating efforts to create a unified data-sharing platform. To address these challenges, Latin America should promote the development of an integrated regional network of biobanks to generate high-quality evidence within the global research ecosystem. This initiative will combine regulatory science-focused on interoperability standards across semantic, technical, legal, and organizational dimensions-and meta-science, which assesses the quality of scientific practice. Evidence indicates that harmonized standards in biobanks lead to higher-quality, more reliable data, thereby facilitating the reproducibility of scientific studies. This paper aims to identify and address existing regulatory, policy, and infrastructure gaps in Latin America to establish harmonized interoperability criteria essential for reproducing

    Keywords: biobanks, regulation, Data interoperability, high-quality evidence, LATAM Biobanks Network, Reproducibility of Scientific Studies

    Received: 16 Aug 2024; Accepted: 02 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Valdés and Lecaros. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Erick Valdés, Institute of Sciences and Innovation in Medicine, Faculty of German Clinical Medicine, University of Development, Santiago, Chile

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.