Biobanks Accreditation Update

In 2019, UKAS was excited to announce plans to develop accreditation for Biobanks to the new international standard ISO 20387. We are pleased to say that the project is progressing well and following a meeting for interested parties in May, we have now received 7 applications from organisations wishing to participate in the pilot project.

These applications are now being processed and the next step of the route to accreditation – the documentation review, will soon be underway before the assessment process begins.  A steering group has been formed with experts from many different types of biobanks including human tissue, crop, fungi and veterinary biobanks. The steering group is assisting UKAS in the development of  accreditation and is providing expert advice on the interpretation and application of ISO 20387 to the different types of Biobanks.

UKAS is developing expertise in this area, performing comparisons of ISO 20387 and its requirements to other established standards such as ISO/IEC 17025 and ISO 15189, as well as recruiting a pool of experts to join our assessment teams.

In October attended the UK Biobanks Showcase and held a webinar about our work in this area. If you would like any more information about the project or the webinar,  please contact the team to discuss further:  [email protected].