Managing the Quality of Data and Metadata for Biobanks

Medical research requires biological material and data of documented trustworthy quality for delivering relevant and reproducible results. The management of the quality of biological samples for medical research received high attention in recent years resulting in welldocumented and audited standard operating procedures and standards for the documentation of various quality characteristics. We need similar efforts to establish systems, policies, and procedures for assuring well-documented quality characteristics of data and metadata. We review the typical data and metadata characteristics and point to precise definitions of these properties. We present and discuss the requirements for managing these qualities and propose a process and the necessary activities for biobanks to establish such a holistic system for data quality management. The complex nature of biobanks as data producers, data providers, data mediators, and data repositories dealing with data from various sources and the highly sensitive nature of personal health data makes them a most interesting use case for data quality management, supporting both known and unknown future demands.