BIOBANK FEATURES

Contact support@Species360.org

Biobank Administration:

How to manage the Biobank functionality in ZIMS

The Biobank administrator can add and remove Staff for the Biobank, but ZIMS users for Biobank must be activated and their custom Biobank roles assigned by Species360 staff. This is because of the unique ability of Biobank staff to create ZIMS records for other institutions and the need to tightly control which type of records can be created or modified by Biobank staff. That control is maintained by providing Biobank users with custom roles that restrict add and edit rights to designated record types. As a result, Biobank staff cannot assign or modify their Biobank roles. All such role changes and assignments are done by Species360 staff with the change requests coming from the Biobank administrator. Species360 support staff will create a task for tracking the request, mark it as complete when the change has been completed and let the Biobank administrator know the task has been completed.

The Biobank institution is associated with a list of authorizing institutions. Those institutions have given Biobank the right to add animal sample records on behalf of their institution. Initially the list was populated with all EAZA member institutions using ZIMS. That authorizing institutions list will change over time and it is maintained by Species360 support staff. Requests to add or remove institutions from the list come through support and may come directly from the institution or from the Biobank administrator. Species360 support staff will create a task for tracking the request, mark it as complete when the change has been completed and let the Biobank administrator or member institution know the task has been completed.

Biobank Storage and Shared Sample Records:

When a sample is sent to the Biobank for storage, there are two ways that Biobank can enter the storage information about that sample.

As mentioned above, the institution submitting the sample can be included in the Authorizing Institution list, explicitly granting Biobank permission to create a Biobank sample record on behalf the submitting institution and then Biobank creates storage records linked to that sample record. The sample record created by Biobank is automatically shared with the submitting institution, making that sample record visible in the medical records of that institution.

The alternative method is for the submitting institution to create the sample record in ZIMS and choose to share that sample record with Biobank. Institutions using ZIMS for medical may already be entering many samples into ZIMS so that test & result records can be linked to the sample. When a portion of that sample is also sent to a Biobank hub, that existing sample record can be shared with the Biobank institution, removing any need for additional data entry about collected samples. Sharing the sample record with Biobank does not prevent the submitting institution from adding other records linked to the sample (for example, other test & result records or local storage records). However, sharing the record with Biobank does gives implicit permission to Biobank to create Biobank storage records linked to that sample. Biobank does not need to create a copy of the sample collection information, preventing any chance of a transcription error by Biobank staff.

Other functionalities that are supported:

Revised 5 March 2025