Biobanking for Precision Medicine Seminar Series

Dr. Peter Watson: “Permission to Contact”: An Integrated Strategy for Patients and Scientists to Improve Engagement and Enrollment in Biobanking and Clinical Research

November 4, 2020

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Abstract: Approximately 40 percent of cancer research depends on human biospecimens and data that are collected through biobanking in the context of basic, translational, and clinical research studies and biobanks. The research demand for biospecimens is steadily increasing in terms of scale and scope. Therefore, improving the way (for patients and researchers) that we enroll patients into all clinical research that includes biobanking components is important. All research also depends on funding, and therefore improving the way we engage with, inform, and obtain the support of patients is also important. And yet in many cancer centers, only a small fraction of patients ever hear about research opportunities or are asked to participate. And those who do participate are usually enrolled into study-specific (personalized) databases that are hard for other researchers to find or access. This seminar presentation will describe an enrollment model to address these issues called a “Permission to Contact for Research” (PTC) platform which was developed in British Columbia, Canada. We will describe the implementation and performance of the PTC platform, and how it has proven to be efficient, effective and engaging for both researchers and patients.