Bio-informatics workshop

The Malta Biobank (BBMRI.mt / EuroMED) team organised a 4-day bio-informatics workshop from 15th to 18th January, hosting Heimo Müller from BBMRI-ERIC’s Common Service IT.

Dr. Müller delivered a seminar about BIBBOX (Basic Infrastructure Building Box), an App Store for Life Science research for researchers at the Centre of Molecular Medicine and Biobanking. This App Store was developed by BBMRI-ERIC’s Common Service IT as a service for BBMRI-ERIC’s National Nodes and research groups.

The Maltese National Node now has an installation of BIBBOX at the IT Services of the University of Malta. BBMRI.mt now uses some of the IT tools provided by BIBBOX including: Open Specimens, a biobank sample management system; PhenoTips to record research participant’s clinical data; Molgenis for the RD-Connect sample catalogue and SeedDMS, a document and file management system.

During the visit Dr. Müller had the opportunity to meet:

the Malta BioBank team led by Professor Alex Felice, Professor Saviour Zammit, the University’s Pro-Rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer;

Professor Richard Muscat, Director, Centre of Molecular Medicine and Biobanking and Head of Department of Physiology and Biochemistry;

Professor Ernest Cachia, Dean, Faculty of Information and Communication Technology and Head of Department of Computer Information Systems;

Dr. Axel Stewer and his team from the Research Support Services Directorate;

Professor Christian Scerri, Consultant Medical Geneticist, Mater Dei Hospital;

Ms Sharon Young, Director, IT and Data Protection at Mater Dei Hospital;

representatives from MITA Health team and Dr. Neville Calleja, Director, Health Information and Research, Directorate for Health Information and Research within the Ministry for Health.

The visit was supported by BBMRI-ERIC Common Service IT and RD-Connect.

This was the first of a series of workshops the Malta BioBank (BBMRI.mt / EuroMED) will be organising this year.

For more information please visit:

The Malta BioBank www.um.edu.mt/biobank

BIBBOX www.bibbox.org

RD-Connect www.rd-connect.eu

EuroBioBank www.eurobiobank.org